


new romantics

by ivyrobinson



Series: new romantics [1]
Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Found Family, Modern AU, kind of!!!!, party girl anya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 35,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: modern au. where anya befriended the hussies shortly after losing her memory. dmitry is their neighbor. and gleb is a private investigator whose latest investigation keeps hitting way too close to home
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: new romantics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1613395
Comments: 80
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the result of me asking, "what if anya was a bit of a bad girl/party girl?"

There was nothing quite like the feel of music pulsing through you, as the flashing lights of the dancefloor made everyone an unrecognizable blur, spurred on by the softened edges provided by the alcohol. Dunya lifted her arm up, and Anya twirled below it, laughing. There was nowhere she’d rather be at the moment, except maybe…

“I need another shot,” she leaned into yell in her friend’s ear, as a twirl had come to an end. 

Her friend nodded, giving her the nonverbal cue that she should good, and that Dunya was fine and going to stay out there. 

Anya had met Dunya, Marfa and Paulina in her mid-teens, when they had all been placed in the same group home. Anya, for whatever reason- for she certainly didn’t know, had no memories beyond two months before she had found herself in the foster care system. Before that, had been in the hospital. There was no trace of who she was that the doctors could find or match her with, and no one had come forward to claim her. The state of New York had named her Anya Plisetsky, and had aged her around 15 or 16. 

The other girls had been placed together, on and off, since they were 13. They hadn’t initially taken to a new girl in their space. After several hazing events and one night where Anya had saved Paulina from being caught sneaking back in after curfew, the girls had gone all in on a friendship with her. 

She leaned against the bar, and motioned to Sergei, the bartender. “Purple kamikaze shot, please.” 

Sergei slid the shot over to her, and she slid the necessary bills back to them. Marfa insisted that they couldn’t do tabs anymore, after one rather intense birthday outing they had for Dunya one year that had landed them a rather expensive tab. 

Anya downed the shot, placing the glass back down on the counter. She felt a rather unfamiliar had placed on her ass, and she turned sharply. The guy was so close she could feel the breath on her ear. 

“Let me buy you another drink little girl,” he said, proving how gross men at bars could be. 

“Keep your hand off my ass,” Anya warned him, reaching down to pull off her left shoe. She wasn’t exactly steady now, as the last shot hit her system, but she didn’t fall down. She lifted her shoe up, stiletto heel out. “Or I will puncture your eye with my heel.”

She had long ago learned there was no tactful way of telling gross guys that you didn’t want to fuck them, so being direct was the best route.  
The man stepped closer, crowding her space because men thought they were fucking invincible. “You crazy bitch, I bet you’re a rea---”

Anya lunged, only to find herself suspended in midair by an arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her off her feet and pulling her away from the guy. The guy, still having no sense of his own mortality, stepped forward, but something about the person attached to the arm made him walk away, muttering to himself. 

“Okay, Princess,” she could barely hear him over the music of the club. She was unconcerned, because she had known who it was from the moment the arm had snaked around her waist. “You’re cut off.” Anya opened her mouth to protest, because she had been justified in attacking the shit out of that guy. “I know you should’ve gouged out his eye, but I have neither the time nor the money to bail you out of jail for assault tonight.” 

Dmitry Sudayev, another failure of the United States foster system. He had been in an orphanage with the other girls before Anya had arrived, but had remained a fixture throughout the years. He never seemed to take Anya seriously though. At least not since he had walked in on the girls, back when they were 17, speculating on what Anya’s past could actually be. Unfortunately, he had walked in just as Paulina was saying, rather dreamily, “Who knows, Anyok, you could be a lost princess.” 

And despite the fact that it wasn’t something Anya, herself, was speculating, he called her Princess whenever he truly wanted to annoy her. While the other girls would die for or kill for Dmitry, if he asked for, he had never stirred such devotion in her. 

Anya squirmed in his arms, trying to get down so she could put her shoe down and get back to the dancefloor, but she found her legs being swung up, as Dmitry shifted how he was carrying her. “I can be let go now.”

Dmitry looked down at her, and she considered if she would need to use her heel to make him put her down. He could probably read her mind, because he jostled her slightly, and the shoe slipped from her grip and fell to the floor. “Marfa asked me to round up you and Dunya, as her and Paulina have already made it back home.” 

Marfa could be such a tattletale sometimes, and felt her mouth turning down in a pout. Which, of course, made Dmitry smile. She missed her shoe. 

“Mitya!” Dunya exclaimed, coming over to them. Of course, Dunya would be happy to see him. “Did Momfa send you?”

Momfa was a secret nickname Dunya, Anya and Paulina had given Marfa. It wasn’t that Marfa was nurturing, but she had a way of taking charge and controlling them. They would never dare use this nickname anywhere near her.

“She thought you guys might need an escort home.”

Home was a block and a half away, and Dunya and her had made it home okay plenty of times. 

Dunya gasped, “What a hero.” 

Anya, who was still rather in the undignified position of being in Dmitry’s arms, turned her head to glare at her friend. 

“She’s grumpy drunk,” Dunya said in a loud whisper to Dmitry, as they walked outside. 

She could feel Dmitry’s silent laughter. “I think the grumpy has more to do with me than the drunk part.”

Anya lifted her chin up, because he wasn’t wrong. The door to the bar closed behind him. If he could put her down now. But then she remembered, “My shoe!”

Dmitry looked over his shoulder at the bar, as others walked in and sent out a noise of chaos into the night air. “You’re right,” he said, and slid his hand down to pull her other shoe off, and tossed it off to the side. She gave off an indignant yelp. “Now they match.” 

She hit him on the shoulder, but he was solid and didn’t even react to the infliction. Anya was stuck crossing her arms over her chest, and turned her head away from him. Beside them, Dunya chattered on rather tipsy but happily to Dmitry, who responded to her in a much nicer way than he ever talked to Anya. 

Dunya let them into the building, as Dmitry’s arms were still full of her, and they crossed the lobby towards the elevator. If he was going to insist on being barbaric, there was at least one thing she could do as revenge. 

Anya sniffed, “I don’t know, Dmitry, I think the elevator might make me throw up.”

“You want me to let you down to use the stairs?” He asked her.

“You took my shoes,” Anya pointed out, flexing her feet upwards to prove it. “Who knows what is on the stairs.”

Dmitry rolled his eyes upward, “You want me to carry you up three flights of stairs?”

She placed a hand on his chest, and said very seriously, “This is a bed of your own making.” 

He muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t make out but could recognize as not kind. Dunya giggled beside them, and then followed as they started up the stairs. In all honesty, the motion of going up the stairs made her feel rather nauseated but she decided that Dmitry’s discomfort in having to carry her up three flights of stairs was worth it. 

Dunya opened the door to the apartment, and Dmitry dumped Anya rather unceremoniously onto the sofa. She reached down to pull down the skirt of her dress before she lost any more dignity in front of him that night. 

“Marfa!” He called out, “I’ve returned our friends, I am going home.” 

Marfa stuck her head out from the bathroom, a toothbrush in her hand. “Thank you, oh saint Dmitry.” 

Dunya gave him a kiss on the cheek goodbye, and he left, closing the door behind him tightly. Home, for him, was only across the hall from them. 

Anya got up, a little too fast, and she ran to the kitchen sink before throwing up. She hoped Dmitry’s arms were sore in the morning.

-

Anya woke up to find Paulina drooling in her hair, and a sledgehammer torturing her brain. She pulled Paulina’s arm off of her, and sat up, trying to get her bearings. She remembered being forced home by Dmitry, and coming back but….She pressed a palm to her forehead and closed her eyes, counting to ten. She opened her eyes and blinked her vision into focus. She was in Paulina’s room. Oh right, she had accidentally gone into Paulina’s room instead of her own last night, and decided it was a good enough place to sleep. 

Out of all four of the girls, Anya and Paulina were the two that looked the most like they could be sisters. Similar height and build, both had honey blonde hair that was only off by a few shades. Anya had clear blue eyes while Paulina had blue-ish green ones. She liked to think of a universe where her and Paulina were blood sisters. 

She found a bottle of water and aspirin on the night table, and she took a slow sip of it. “Momfa strikes again,” she said it to herself, but Paulina giggled, signaling that she was up. Anya took the aspirin and washed it down. “Thanks for the bed last night, Polly.” 

“Anytime,” Paulina said. “Close the door behind you, I don’t have to work today.” 

Unlike Anya, who had to get herself functioning in the next hour or so to get to her job. 

She made it about three minutes late, which was impressive given everything she had to accomplish to make it to Theater Street Fitness, where she currently worked as a receptionist. It was quiet this morning, thankfully, so when she made sure no one was around, she rested her forehead against the cool desk. 

Seven more hours and she could go home and not have to deal with the metallic sound of machines and upbeat workout music. 

The moment she had put her head down, she could hear the sound of something being placed on her desk. She took a deep breath, and brought her head up, ready to give her customer service smile. 

Instead she just saw it was Dmitry placing some gross looking green smoothie in front of her. 

“Hungover?” He asked, rather smugly. 

The job wasn’t so bad. The biggest downside, however, was that Dmitry worked as a personal trainer there. There wasn’t a corner of her life where she couldn’t seem to shake him. 

She glared at him and pushed away the cup, “You owe me a pair of shoes.” 

“I’ll venmo you later,” he promised, holding his hands up in surrender. “Drink that, it’ll make you feel better.” 

She regarded the cup with suspicion. It looked like something that would make her more sick. “I don’t trust you, Dmitry.” 

“You don’t have to,” he replied, but pushed the cup back to her. “But if you throw up on a member, it’s going to be a real pain in the ass.” 

Reluctantly, she brought the cup to her face, taking a slow sip of it from the straw. She wrinkled her nose. It was as bad as she thought it would be.

“Stay the course!” He called to her as he walked away. 

Anya weighed the choice between drinking this concoction or throwing up on a member, and decided she couldn’t afford the latter. She took another small sip. It got worse with every sip.

A woman, about her age, maybe a year or so younger, came up to the receptionist desk. Anya vaguely remembered checking her in earlier, but couldn’t remember a single thing about her. “Who is that?”

She resisted a sigh, because women- and men- always reacted this way to Dmitry. She pulled out one of his business cards and handed it over to her, “Dmitry Sudayev, personal trainer.” 

“Oh,” the woman breathed, staring at the business card like it was a free pass to his dick instead of his work phone number and e-mail address. “Does he have any openings?”

“No,” Anya said, not needing to check. Dmitry was always booked out at least a month in advance. He was, for all intents and purposes, handsome, and charming- to the members, at least, and good at his job, she supposed. “He’s all booked up.” 

The member tilted her head, “Really? Can’t you check?” 

Anya pulled up the scheduling program, clicking on Dmitry’s name. She went through several weeks, found two open slots, and then went past a couple weeks further. “He has an opening November 16th at 10am?”

It was two and a half months away. The woman frowned but then said, “Book it.”

“Can I see your gym key?” Anya asked, as a way to avoid having to ask her name again when she should know it from earlier. The woman handed it over, and Anya scanned it in the system. Natasha Yahontov. Aged 19. Anya handed the key back to her. She scheduled it, “Would you like to have an e-mailed confirmation?” Natasha nodded and Anya clicked the button.

She finally got rid of her, to have the phone ring. 

“Theater Street Fitness, this is Anya speaking, how may I help you?” She listened to the person on the other side and resisted a groan. “No, I’m sorry Dmitry is all booked up until fall.” 

This day would never end.


	2. Chapter 2

Dmitry returned from his evening run, taking out his earbuds as he walked through the door. He found his roommate, Gleb, eating dinner at the table. Gleb had been his roommate for the past six months. He was clean and kept to himself, and Dmitry had yet to get a good read on him. His last roommate, his friend Vlad, had rather unexpectedly eloped with his ex girlfriend and had sort of left Dmitry in the lurch, rent money wise. He wished his friend all the happiness in the world, but wish there had been more of a notice. Gleb worked with one of Dmitry’s clients boyfriend, and had been in need of a room. 

Gleb pointed to the other end of the table, “You had a package come.” 

“Thanks,” Dmitry said, setting his phone down on the table, and picking up the package. “I’ll be back, I have to bring this across the hall.” 

Gleb shook his head. He seemed to like Dmitry well enough, or at least that’s what Dmitry thought, but he very much did not care for the girls across the hall. He had said their personalities were too loud whenever he passed them in the hall, as he had not yet encountered them truly face to face. Dmitry could barely remember a time before the girls were in his life, and could not remember his first impression of any of them. Except Anya. 

He had first met Anya later than the rest, when he was almost 18 and free of the system. It had been some picnic event or another for fostering families and group homes- to help build community. Because a picnic would fix all the wrongs in that system. He had been sitting under a tree, reading a book, when Anya had approached him. He hadn’t known her then, of course, she had been all blonde hair, doe eyes and wearing a baggy blue dress that obviously belonged to someone other than her. 

“Excuse me?” She said, and he had looked up at her. “I’m looking for Dmitry.”

He stood up, looking around. “I’m Dmitry, who wants to know?”

Then she had gotten up on her tiptoes, kissed him, before running back to the trio of girls, where they all collapsed into laughter. Marfa had apologized for bringing him into it, but she didn’t think Anya would actually go through with it. 

Based on the years of experiences behind them now, he could see how much the girls had initially underestimated Anya’s nerve.

Dmitry knocked on the door to the girls apartment, and Marfa pulled the door open a moment later. 

She was in cotton shorts and a tank top, and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun. “I can’t believe you still knock.”

“I’d rather not be traumatized by walking into something I shouldn’t,” Dmitry shuddered as he said it. “Anya home?”

Marfa shook her head, “Her and Paulina went out with some guys they met last week. They should be back later.” She slid up on the kitchen counter to sit, and pulled an apple out of a nearby basket. “Unless, they don’t.” She wagged her eyebrows. 

Dmitry shook his head, they should all be more careful as to who they went home with. But, saying so, only got him lectured on feminsim and sex positivity. “Is it okay if I drop this off in her room?”

Marfa waved in the general direction of Anya’s bedroom, “Go ahead, her door’s open.”

Dmitry stepped into Anya’s room, which was as chaotic as she tended to be. The bed was unmade, the sheets pulled back and rumpled. A dress on the hanger was thrown in the middle of it. Two shoes, not from the same pair, were next to her bed. There was a glass half full of water on the nightstand. Several piles of clothes discarded on the phone. Dmitry almost tripped as he awkwardly tried to not get a bra tangled in his foot. 

He tossed the package onto the dress on her bed, and left the room. 

“Did you bring her shoes?” Marfa called to him as he crossed the living room and back into the kitchen. 

“Yes,” Dmitry said leaning against the counter. Marfa handed him an apple. “I bought the sharpest heels I could find.” 

Marfa shook her head, “Don’t encourage her.” She took a bite out of the apple. “You throwing away Anya’s shoe is Dunya’s new favorite story. I think she’s told every single person she’s ever met.” 

Dmitry rolled his eyes. It had felt like the thing to do in the moment. Especially since the bar was hot, crowded and he hadn’t wanted to go back in there to find a shoe. “She’s a nightmare.” 

“Dunya?” Marfa teased.

“Anya,” he said. “You know she causes more trouble than the other three of you combined?”

Marfa laughed, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Such a grumpy old man.” 

Dmitry shook her off, “She’s too hot headed.”  
“I think an eye gouging is a reasonable response to a guy grabbing your ass,” She said with a shrug. “But such a pain with the law.” She pointed at him, “You never get this worked up about any of the rest of our antics. Anya’s fine. She’s having fun. You remember having fun once up a time?”

“I still have fun,” Dmitry said. It was just with his job, he had to take better care of himself and keep to a strict sleep schedule. Even though it was constantly interrupted by the girls some way or another. 

“Of course you do,” Marfa said, patting him on the cheek. “Now leave, I have the apartment to myself for once and intend to enjoy it.” 

Dmitry placed a kiss on her cheek as a goodbye, and walked across the hall back to his apartment. 

-

The next morning, Dmitry was leaving early to get to work before his first client, when he came across Anya getting off the elevator. She was carrying her shoes (so now she didn’t care if her bare feet touched the floors of the apartment building?), had a coffee cup in her other hand. She was wearing an oversized sweatshirt over a cocktail dress, her hair pulled back into some sort of loose ponytail, and her make up from the night before still lined her face. 

“Hold on,” Dmitry said, pulling out his phone and pulling up his camera app, “This is such a great look on you, I want to remember it forever.”

“I will throw hot coffee on you,” she warned him, but he snapped the photo anyway. 

“Good date?” he asked, watching her struggle with her shoes and her coffee and keys for a moment, before taking the keys from her to unlock the door. 

Anya smiled sweetly, “Well,it just ended so…” Well, that much had been obvious. She dropped her shoes down beside the door. “Why are you up so early?”

“I have some work to do before my first client,” he said and she made a face in response. “Some of us take our jobs seriously.”

“I’m very good at my job,” she sniffed. She wasn’t wrong, but he’d never give her credit for that. “I just can be good at my job and enjoy my life at the same time.”

She was the second person in less than twelve hours to attack his lack of social life. He used to go out with the girls more, when he was younger and had more free time. Now his life was work, working out, and wondering why Gleb always seemed to be watching a military history documentary.

“I’ll see you at work in a few hours,” he told her, and started to leave, but then she called out to him.

“Mitya,” she said, which was enough to stop him in his tracks. She hardly ever called him by the other girls’ nickname for him. “You’re off Sunday, come out with us on Saturday. Have fun.” 

Going out with the girls wasn’t necessarily Dmitry’s idea of fun. It mostly consisted of nursing a drink, while several guys came up to hit on Anya. And the others. The last time he had gone out with them, some guy had ‘taught’ Anya how to play pool, which was mostly a lot of him guiding Anya’s hand to unnecessarily stroke the cue.

The girls had shrieked with laughter about it later, during the cab ride home. 

She stuck her lower lip out in that spoiled way she tended to have, “Please? I won’t even try to assault anyone with my shoe this time.” 

Dmitry laughed, “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.” He threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine, I’ll go out with you guys on Saturday.”

She grinned at him, “Good, because the girls think you don’t go out with us anymore because you don’t like me, when I just know that Vlad took all the fun from you when you moved out.”

“Good night, Anya,” he said, walking away. He heard the door shut with a click, and a lock being turned before he got on the elevator.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a rather slow day on Theater Street. Anya had run out of busy work to do and was now doodling in the margins on her day planner. All the other girls were in class. St Petersburg College in Brooklyn ran a scholarship program for anyone from the foster system to go to college there for free. Anya had been hatched at the age of fifteen (or whatever age she actually had been), with no memories of her own life, and difficulty remembering others. The nurses said she spoke nothing but French for the first few days after her surgery, and were quite surprised when she started speaking perfect English in a Northeastern dialect. They had trouble placing her in school, as the placement tests were inconclusive. She remembered some stuff, sometimes advanced (her reading comprehension had been impressive) but she also had big gaps of more basic knowledge. Eventually, they had given up and instead she had studied for the GED and managed to pass that. 

She also had difficulty retaining knowledge sometimes. Trying to remember things caused headaches for her, and brought on night terrors. As a result, she tried to live in the moment and not think too much. 

“Excuse me, I’m here to see Dmitry?” 

Well, Dmitry’s next appointment was with a forty year old single mom who was trying to get back into shape after her divorce (but really she trained her eyes on Dmitry’s ass her entire session), so this guy was not it. 

‘I’m sorry Dmitry’s all booked out until November,” Anya said, not bothering to glance up. 

There was a clearing of a throat, “I’m not a client, I’m his roommate- Gleb.” 

Anya looked up and let out an oh of surprise. Looking at him now, she could remember passing by a man with dark hair and a chiseled jaw. She jumped up, “Oh, Gleb! It’s good to finally meet you.” 

Dmitry’s not so new roommate was still a mystery to the girls. He was always walking into his apartment when they were around, so they never got a good look at him, or he was just not around at the same hours as them. He never went out with Dmitry, and never came over when Dmitry did. 

He stared at the hand she had reached out with, but then shook it. “Finally?”

“We’re neighbors,” Anya said, gesturing between the two of them. “Across the hall.”

Gleb blinked in surprise, “Of course. It’s so hard to recognize one of you when you’re not so much…” He made a gesture, “in motion.” 

Anya laughed, but it turned into a bit of a yelp as a loud banging banging and crackling noise outside happened.

“It’s okay,” Gleb said, reaching over and lightly touching Anya’s hand, “It’s just a car backfiring.” 

She forced herself to smile. “Sorry, just wasn’t expecting it.” She found herself looking out the window as though she could verify the claim.

Anya had never, at least not in her limited memory, done well with loud, unexpected noises. Ever since they had left the foster system, the girls would take her out of town every fourth of July to some abandoned beach or cabin in the woods where they would hide away from the fireworks. They never actually spoke of it. They were also good of not speaking when she woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Or when she woke up some mornings to find one or all three of them in her bed with her. 

He nodded thoughtfully, “Do you need me to get you something? A tea? Dmitry can wait.” 

“As much as I’d love to disrupt Dmitry’s day,” Anya brought herself to tease, “I won’t disrupt yours, you can go on ahead, his office is the second on the right, I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Gleb lingered for a moment, still seeming concerned about her, which made her reflectively flinch. No one needed to have any concern over her. He walked away, and Anya picked up her phone to text Dmitry that his roommate was on his way. 

-

“You should’ve brought your roommate with you,” Anya commented as she slid next to Dmitry at the table at the bar. As promised, he had come out to the bars with them, but hadn’t done much elsewise. Dmitry used to meet girls in front of them, but no longer did. She didn’t know if it was because they teased him so much, or because the girls were intimidated by him being surrounded by four hot girls. She had two drinks in her hands and slid one to him. 

“You got me a drink?” He sounded suspicious of her motives.

“No,” she was quick to clarify. She discreetly pointed to a blond at the bar, “He got me that drink, and he-” she pointed to a brunette at the other end of the bar, “Got me this one.” 

Dmitry shook his head, but she couldn’t help that guys wanted to waste their money buying her drinks. She always accepted, but she was quick to find Dmitry afterwards, to avoid them approaching her.

“Gleb was quite concerned about you after he met you,” he commented. 

Anya waved it off as she took a sip of the drink, “Oh, you know me. I’m a regular damsel in distress.” 

He snorted at that, which was about as close to a compliment as he had ever given her. “Yes, when I think of women who need rescuing, you are the first person that comes to mind.” She poked him in the ribs for that. 

Dmitry swatted her hand away as Marfa and Dunya approached the table. 

“We’ve lost Paulina,” Marfa announced as her and Dunya sat on the other side of the booth. 

Anya turned her head and saw where Paulina was leaving with a generic looking frat boy. 

“She’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Anya guessed. “He looks like the type to try to hook up in an alley or car.”

Dmitry leaned over her to look where Paulina just had been, “You can tell all that from the back of his head?” 

She pushed his head back. “You can tell a lot by the back of a guy’s head.” She turned her attention to Marfa and Dunya. “I met Dmitry’s roommate.” 

Marfa gasped, “He exists outside of Dmitry’s imagination?”

“You think Gleb is the roommate I would create in my imagination?” He took a drink from the glass Anya had given him. “Marfuska, I thought you knew me better than that.” 

Dunya whispered, but not really, to Anya, “Is he hot?” 

Anya tilted her head as she considered her answer (well she knew her answer- yes in a weirdly severe sort of way, but considered the answer she wanted to give), then whispered- but not really- back to Dunya, “I’ll tell you later.” 

Dmitry sighed, “And on that note, I am leaving.” Marfa and Dunya gasped, and Anya just shrugged and sipped her drink. “The booth, not the bar.” 

He stood up and climbed over Anya to get out of the booth. 

Dunya frowned, and watched him leave. “We should find Mitya a girl.” 

“No girl will ever be good enough for him,” Marfa countered. “Or be able to deal with us.” She shrugged, “He is destined to be alone forever.” 

Anya stayed quiet because she had no real feelings on the subject of Dmitry dating. He had plenty of gym hussies to choose from. Girls constantly found him, and did not need to do it the other way around. 

She finished her drink and then set it down before announcing, “Let’s go dance.” 

And so they did.


	4. Chapter 4

“Dima!” 

The moment Dmitry walked in the door, he knew something was terribly wrong. The first clue was the enthusiastic greeting. He could not remember a single moment in their life that Anya had greeted him with even half the enthusiasm she just greeted him with. The second, was the name, which made him literally take a step back when she used it. It wasn’t a name anyone had used in over fifteen years. When the girls wanted to use a diminutive of Dmitry, they had always used Mitya and Anya very rarely called him by a diminutive. The third was that he was called by a coworker to say there was an incident and Anya was in the emergency room and they needed him to come there stat.

Grigory looked between the two of them, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that happy to see you.” 

“It’s weird, right?” Dmitry said. “So what’s going on?” 

“She broke her leg,” Grigory said, gesturing over to Anya. “She needs to finish filling out the paperwork, but they’re concerned because she keeps starting and then crying that everything she writes is a lie. I’m going back to work.” 

Well, that was semi-informational. Grigory paused, shook his head, and then left. 

“Anya,” Dmitry said, and she tilted her head back. Her hair was in a sloppy bun, and her eyes were unfocused. “What happened?” 

“You’re not my emergency contact, Marfa is my emergency contact. Then Polly. Then Dunya. Then Vlad. Then our landlord. Then…well maybe you.” 

“Awesome,” Dmitry said, taking the clipboard from her. “What did you do to your leg?” 

“I tripped on equipment,” She said with a wave of her hand, as though that was a normal thing to do. She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Did they send you to make sure I don’t sue?”

“No, that’s why Grigory went with you,” Dmitry said, or at least assumed. “They sent me because I know you outside of work and couldn’t reach your emergency contact.” 

Marfa was in class, which he also knew. 

There was a sharp knock on the door and a woman walked in. “Is your paperwork all filled out now?” She asked with the exhaustion of a woman that probably had asked that question several times a day. 

“I don’t know the questions,” Anya said back. “I don’t even know my name.” 

The woman closed her eyes and looked ready to call the psychiatric ward. In any other instance Dmitry would be on board, but he did follow Anya’s convoluted pain killer logic at the moment. Or at least what he hoped was pain killer logic. 

“She has no memory from before she was 15,” Dmitry said, by way of explanation, as he began to fill out Anya’s paperwork for her. “No known family. This information is legal, but just issued by the state is all.” 

He pulled her purse out of his messenger bag, the other reason why he was called there, and found her ID and health insurance card. 

The woman softened at his explanation, and took the documents and clipboard from him. “Thank you, I’ll input this into the computer and have her prescription sent out to the pharmacy.” 

Anya reached over and touched his face, “Dmitry?” 

“Anya?” He said, though his mouth was partially muffled by the palm of her hand. 

“Where’s Marfa?” 

He pried her hand off his face, “She’s in class. I’m here to take you home.” 

She gasped, “But you live so far away.” 

“Okay,” Dmitry took a deep breath. “I’m going to see what we need to do to discharge you, and get us an Uber to bring us back to the apartment.” 

Anya reached over and grabbed his hand to pat it with the other, “You’re a nice boy, Dima.” 

“I’m really going to regret not being able to record any of this,” Dmitry responded, and went to move but she held onto his hand. “Anya?”

She stared at their hands for a long moment, tugged on his hand, before uncurling her fingers from around it, and then releasing it. 

Dear God, it was going to be a long trip home. 

-

It had been a long trip home. Even when Anya fell asleep halfway between the pharmacy and the apartment building. And then didn’t wake up when they arrived at the building. So for the second time that month, he found himself carrying Anya through their apartment building. He had the foresight to fish the keys to her apartment out of her purse before getting out of the car. 

The issue was with the cast on, it added weight to her that hadn’t been there when he had carried her previously. And she had been conscious back then, which in hindsight, had been a huge help.

At least this time she wasn’t awake to argue with him about taking the elevator. It wasn’t until he had managed to get her through the door, open the door to her bedroom, and set her on her bed before her eyes conveniently shuttered open. 

“‘Mitry?” Anya said, groggily, rubbing her eyes. “Where’s girls?”

“Class,” he responded, like he had the several other times she had asked before she had fallen asleep in the car. “Marfa texted me when you were asleep, she should be home within the hour.”

She had been rather frantic, but he managed to convince her the worst was over and that he had it under control. 

“Oh,” she said, and closed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. 

Anya looked rather young and pitiful, laying against her full sized bed like that. At some point between the car and her bed, her bun had fully collapsed. 

It was such a look that had him asking, “Did you need anything before I go home?”

He expected her to turn him down, which was her normal response to anything he asked her, but she nodded and said, “Water.” 

Oh, well that was a simple enough ask. Dmitry went out to the kitchen and poured a glass of water for Anya. He checked his phone but Marfa hadn’t said anything since she said she’d start heading home. 

This was probably the most time he’d spent alone with Anya...ever. He had hung out with the other three alone plenty of times throughout the years. He could only remember short snippets here and there where it had been just him and Anya. 

He supposed she was the one he saw the most, given that they worked at the same place, but they were never alone there. 

Dmitry walked back into her room, half expecting her to have fallen asleep. Instead, she was sitting up, her back against the headboard. She reached out for the glass of water, and drank from it rather greedily when he gave it to her. 

It was quiet as she set the now empty glass aside. 

“Marfa should be home soon,” Dmitry reminded her. “Text me if you need anything before then.” 

“You’re going?” Anya asked, in a small voice, and a wobble of her chin. 

Dmitry looked around, because she had certainly never wanted him to stick around before. “You don’t want me to go?” 

She bit her lip, and he wondered if the pain killers were starting to wear off because she seemed hesitant to ask him to stay. Which was more like regular Anya than any other Anya he had encountered that day. 

Instead of letting her answer, he kicked off his shoes, and sat next to her on her bed. He had already chased and carried her around the city all day. What was one more hour until Marfa or one of the other girls made it home? 

They were quiet again. Sitting side by side, arm to arm. Maybe she’d just fall asleep again. 

“You know you drool in your sleep,” Dmitry commented to her. 

“Stop it,” she complained, pushing against his arm without much success. “I’m on pain medication, I have no control over it.” She pointed over towards her nightstand, “Grab my laptop, we can watch something until Marfuska gets home.” 

Dmitry did as he was told, and handed the computer to her, which amazingly she was able to get the password right. Then she opened up a streaming site, and handed the computer back to him. 

“What do you want to watch?” 

Her cheek was already resting against his shoulder, and she turned her face towards it. “I don’t care.” 

Dmitry selected the first thing on her list, before setting the computer down on his legs. It didn’t even take ten minutes before she was asleep again. Her hand curled over his arm, and her head resting on his shoulder. Drooling, again. 

It was also how Marfa found them forty five minutes, when she managed to quietly burst into Anya’s bedroom. 

“Oh, how sweet,” she whispered, and he rolled his eyes. 

He gently shut the laptop, and set it aside, before sliding out from beside Anya, and trying to maneuver her onto the pillow so she didn’t fall straight over.

They didn’t speak until they were both back out in the main room of the apartment. 

“She didn’t want me to leave,” he said by way of explanation.

Marfa shrugged, “She doesn’t like to be alone.” She stated it as a fact, but he didn’t think he had ever noticed before. She pulled out some containers from the fridge. “Leftovers for dinner and you can tell me what the hell happened today.” 

“Sure,” Dmitry agreed, taking one of the containers from her. “But she was already on pain killers when I got to her, so there’s not much I actually know.” 

Marfa sighed, and then started the reheating process. 

It had been a very long day.


	5. Chapter 5

Gleb Vaganov was having a bit of a dry spell. He had exactly two clients, which held minimal effort or work needed from him. He was bored. It had been at least two weeks since anything interesting had come across his desk. His father had always hated when it was slow back when he was younger. His mother said his father was a private investigator who was always looking for trouble.

He may or may not have inherited this from his father. Which was ironic, considering…

He had stopped by the office that morning, before heading back to the apartment. Just being there without any work to do, made him feel pressured, so he had taken any busy work he had and brought it back to his apartment. Honestly, this was the nicest part of the day. Dmitry was perfectly fine as a roommate, he kept his part clean, wasn’t too loud and was courteous when he left early in the morning or came home late at night. But Gleb did enjoy the peace and quiet of having the apartment all to himself while Dmitry was working at the gym. 

As though the universe could read his mind, there was a knock on the door. The landlord? A neighbor? Gleb didn’t have much of a social life wherever he went so he was certain it wasn’t for him. 

Sure enough, he opened the door to see his neighbor that also worked with Dmitry. Anya. She was balancing on a pair of crutches he was certain she hadn’t had when he had met her at the gym. 

“I thought I heard someone over here,” she said, by way of greeting. “I didn’t think it was Dmitry.” 

And yet she came over here anyway. 

“It was a bit slow at work,” he explained, “So I did what I needed from here.” 

“Oh,” she said, looking past him, squinting at the television. He stepped aside to let her in, because it seemed the polite thing to do. “What are you watching?”

“A documentary on the War of 1812.” Then, even though he was certain he would regret it but because he could see the crutches and feel the boredom radiating off of her. “Would you like a cup of tea and join me?”

“Yes,” she said far more emphatically than he would’ve thought someone of her age, demeanor and beauty would do. “Thank you.” She maneuvered herself onto the couch and he took the crutches from her, resting them against the wall. “Some water too, please, so I can take my pain medication.” 

Gleb nodded, and headed back out to the kitchen. Well, this should be… something.

And about half an hour later it had already been something with several interruptions and tangents provided by Anya, and some provided by him when he tried to answer her questions.

And then:

Gleb felt Anya’s fingertip brush against his jawline. “You’re really attractive, you know?”

He has been trying so hard to focus on the commentary currently being presented on the War of 1812, but his head snapped to look at her at that. 

“What?”

She dropped her hand and sighed, and he wondered if he was needed for this conversation. She had been somewhat babbling on and off throughout the documentary. But usually somewhat related to the documentary. He now knew she had a GED and what was the War of 1812 anyway because hadn’t they already defeated the British already in the 1700s? 

The afternoon had been a lot. But her presence and habit of constantly needing to talk hadn’t annoyed him as much as he would’ve expected. 

“But you don’t even know it,” she continued on. Severe, intimidating, and rigid were the adjectives he was far more acquainted with when people described his appearance. The only thought he ever gave to it was when his hair started to curl in that unprofessional manner, or how slovenly he looked if he didn’t shave often enough. “That eliminates you from my type.”

Thankfully, that saved him from having to initiate an awkward conversation with her once she wasn’t so out of it from her medication. 

“I don’t have patience for guys who don’t know when they’re hot,” Anya said, turning her compliment somehow into criticism. At least that was a concept he was far more familiar and comfortable with. “See, Dmitry knows he’s hot.”

Well, Gleb could already tell from the amount of time his roommate spent in the shower and in front of the mirror that vanity was certainly a part of his personality. Though, thankfully, not one he spoke of so openly as Anya was currently doing. 

“So, Dmitry is your type?”

Anya pulled back, clearly offended by the suggestion. Even though there was a clear correlation between what she was saying about her type and what she had just said. “No. Not at all. No.” Well, that was a lot of protesting. And when she had knocked on the door earlier it certainly hadn’t been Gleb who she had been looking to spend time with. “It’s just other people are so annoying at how they react to ‘Mitry’s good looks.”

Now Gleb was nowhere close to being a relationship expert. Or even good with emotions. But that definitely sounded like textbook jealousy. 

“I...see,” Gleb responded, though he didn’t see anything. At this point he figured it might be best to just agree with whatever she was saying. 

Perhaps now would be another break in conversation and he could focus on the current historian speaking. 

And it was quiet for a moment. Two moments. And then. 

“Although,” Anya said and he wasn’t quite certain which forgotten conversation thread she was picking up. “Mitya was my first kiss.”

Oh, the Dmitry thread. 

“I think,” she said. “Did you know I have no actual memory of my life before I was fifteen?”

Gleb turned his head sharply at that, because he did not know that. And he still did not know if this real or more incoherent babbling on her part. “You don’t?”

She lifted her arms up as she shrugged, “Just woke up one day and had no idea about anything. No one claimed me. No record on me. Just slapped a name and birthdate on me and put me in the system.”

The part of Gleb that had spent the past ten years being a private investigator plus his entire life being the son of one, was instantly intrigued. “Have you ever looked into it since then?”

Once she was in the foster system itself, no one in charge of anything would have cared to keep looking into the mystery of why a teenager suddenly appeared with no memory and no way to trace her. 

Anya’s eyes grew wide at that, showing fear lurking within the depths of blue. “Absolutely not.”

Gleb paused the documentary, because now his attention was fully pulled from it. He couldn’t imagine not wanting to look into every possible nook and cranny of his past if there was even a piece of the puzzle that didn’t make sense to him. And he had. Even when the answers were upsetting. 

“You don’t have any interest at all in finding out who you were before your memory loss?”

She shook her head. Then she flipped her hair to the side, rearranging it slightly and revealing a thin line of bald spot with a jagged scar on it. “Someone tried to shoot me in the head.” He had recognized it as a bullet graze before she said it. She flipped her hair back in place before he could examínate it further. 

“Before your memory loss?” He just wanted to get a good hold on the time line. 

She shrugged, “I had such short hair when I woke up.” She reached down and lifted up her shirt, revealing her stomach. Well, this was just uncomfortable again. But then she pointed to a white scar off to the side. “Stab wound that had been infected when I came in.” She let her shirt drop back down into place. Anya leaned over and dropped her voice to a whisper, “And there are marks on my back.”

She twisted to show her currently difficulty in lifting her shirt and exposing her back to him. Well, he had certainly not expected that when he had opened the door and let her in earlier. 

“Whoever I was before,” she sounded more tired and serious than she had the entire afternoon. “Is someone that should be dead and why would I want to be that person?”

He would have so many questions if it were him. He did have so many questions. He would be haunted by it every moment of his life. And maybe she was but repressed it. Which was also something he was painfully familiar with. But she was also drowsy and in pain and clearly not in her right mind to have an actual conversation about it. 

Gleb stood up. “I am going to get you more tea.”

Her eyes lit up at that, removing the shadows that had just been there as she spoke of her injuries. “Do you have cookies?”

“Do you think someone like Dmitry keeps cookies in his apartment?”

She giggled at that. And then rested her cheek against the back of the couch, watching him as he prepared another cup of tea for her. 

Gleb turned the program back on as she drank it. The tea distracting her from talking, apparently. Her earlier admissions distracted him from focusing on the documentary, meaning he learned approximately nothing from it between her original interruption, subsequent tangent of conversations and now this. 

It would probably be rude if he got up and started writing down everything she had just told him. He didn’t spend much time in the company of others, but that definitely felt like something that would be frowned upon. He wondered if he could discreetly write it down in the notes section of his phone, but he felt like him pulling out his phone would capture her attention to what he was doing even more than getting a pen and paper. 

It was just, when presented with puzzles such as this he couldn’t resist trying to put the pieces together. He had destroyed his own life in the process, or at least portions of it, but the need to solve things was greater than his own need of self preservation. 

There was a loud knock on the door, “Mitya, open up.” 

He was not Dmitry, but as he was the only one in the apartment who both lived there or was currently mobile, Gleb got up to open the door. He had thought himself fortunate that Dmitry had so few visitors, or at least the presence of a new roommate seemed to hold them at bay or install some sort of etiquette in their neighbors. Or, maybe it was just that Dmitry was constantly over there, so they had no need to be over here. But getting a second visitor in the same day hinted that the time for such peace and quiet was up. 

He opened the door to find the neighbor with the curly brown hair on the other side. The one he spotted the most actually with Dmitry or meeting Dmitry in the hall. She seemed like the type of girl who… well, how had Anya put it earlier? Knew how attractive she was. 

“Oh, Dmitry’s roommate,” she said by way of greeting. “Glen?”

“Gleb,” he corrected. “Dmitry’s not here.”

“Oh,” she said, the disappointment in her voice growing. “I was hoping Anya would be here with him.”

“Anya is here,” Gleb informed her. “Dmitry is not.” 

“Ah, the little social butterfly,” his neighbor said, then stepped around him and walked towards Anya on the couch. “Making new friends, Anyouk?” 

“Yes, Gleb and I are the greatest of friends now,” Anya announced as her roommate handed her the crutches. “He’s much nicer than Dmitry.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is polite, and you and Mitya are far beyond that point now,” her friend pointed out. Then she looked directly at Gleb. “Thank you for keeping her company.”

“She was no trouble,” Gleb said, though he still wasn’t certain if that was necessarily true. 

His neighbor snorted at that. “Anya is nothing but trouble, but we find her charming regardless. I got take over, let us treat you to dinner.”

He wasn’t certain if that was a good idea if the only name he knew of the four girls next door was Anya’s. 

But then Anya unintentionally helped him out by exclaiming, “That is such a good idea, Marfa.”

Marfa. Right. 

“I don’t want to impose,” he stated. 

“May as well,” Marfa said, getting the door for Anya. “She has no such reservations.”

Well, he did need to eat and perhaps he could find out more of this unfinished puzzle Anya had presented him with this afternoon. 

Plus, Marfa seemed like a very difficult person to say No to.


	6. Chapter 6

Dmitry wasn’t surprised to find his apartment empty when he arrived home. Him and Gleb both kept odd hours. He opened the fridge, and found little that appealed to him at the moment so he did what he normally would do- head over to the girls’ apartment to mooch off whatever takeout they had ordered. If any one of the four of them could actually cook he had never actually witnessed it. 

What he was surprised to find, however, was his reserved, not at all social, roommate sitting in the middle of the living room. Anya on one side of him, and Paulina on the other. Marfa and Dunya across from them. All the girls were talking over each other, having the half conversations they tended to have when gathered together. 

Gleb looked politely overwhelmed but occasionally would turn his head to address Anya directly. 

Dmitry had been gone for less than nine hours. What the fuck had he missed?

“Mitya!” Dunya exclaimed, making room for him in between her and Marfa. “Come join us, we were just getting to know your roommate.”

Something like gratitude flashed in Gleb’s eyes and Dmitry wasn’t certain it his roommate had ever looked excited to see him before. “Was it telepathically? All I could hear was you guys talking.” 

Marfa handed him a plate and a takeout container for him to start, “He wants to get to know us too.”

Outside of the initial roommate interview, he was certain Gleb had never asked him another single thing about his life. 

Pretty girls were different, but he still couldn’t see Gleb going a complete personality change swayed by that. 

“He spent the day with Anya,” Marfa continued on. 

Reflexively, Dmitry flinched. “Doing what? Watching military documentaries?”

After the words were out of his mouth he realized how rude that probably sounded to Gleb. Anya as well, but most things said to each other were rude to begin with. 

Anya sniffed, twirling her food around with a fork. “Yes, we watched a totally fascinating look at the War of 1812.”

Even Gleb had looked skeptical at her use of fascinating. 

He tried to imagine Anya and his roommate cozied up on the couch-his couch- watching educational documentaries and every single bit of it felt wrong. 

Gleb set his plate aside, “Thank you ladies for the meal,” and he turned to address Anya specifically, “and the company.” Back to the group, “But I have some maintenance related issues I have to discuss with Dmitry.”

Dmitry, who had only gotten a few bites in but had lost most of his appetite somewhere along the conversation, set his plate down as well. He guessed they were done for the night. He got up and kissed Marfa on the cheek, and then Dunya and had to stop to kiss Paulina on the cheek as well. 

Anya stuck out her hand, “I’ll permit you a handshake.”

He rolled his eyes, because the cheek kisses were something the other three always made him do and something him and Anya never did so it hadn’t even been a thought to do so. 

Though he did shake her hand, and she squeezed it real quick while smiling up at him sweetly. 

She was truly a hazard to all mankind. 

When Dmitry walked into the apartment, Gleb was already sitting at the kitchen counter. “Did you need the super’s number? She really didn’t like it last time Vlad and I tried to fix something on our own.”

“No, that was just an excuse to talk to you alone,” Gleb said, waving that off. 

Jesus, could this day get any weirder?

“What did Anya do?”

“Nothing,” Gleb said. “Well, she said a few concerning things when on painkillers that I just wanted to...clarify.” 

Having spent time with Anya on painkillers, he could only imagine. “What did she say?” 

“She said she had no memory from before she was fifteen,” he began, and Dmitry nodded to verify. “And that someone had tried to murder her.” 

Dmitry blinked, “Recently?” 

“No,” Gleb shook his head, “Before her memory loss.” 

He tried to recall Anya from when he first met her, but all he could remember was the grass from the picnic, that blue dress, her honey blonde hair back then falling somewhere between her chin and her shoulders, and her lips on his. He had been so annoyed with her after their first meeting, he didn’t really recall learning anything about her. 

Just one day she was there, with the girls, and just never left. 

Sometimes she’d make quick jokes at her lack of memory’s expense but she rarely brought up the circumstances following waking up without it. He mostly forgot about it, he should be embarrassed to realize, until how distressed she had been at the hospital when she had broken her leg. 

She had a lot to be distress about that day, so he thought it more of a culmination of things than anything else. 

“That’s…something you’d have to ask the girls about,” Dmitry answered, finally. “We’ve never talked about it.” 

“Bickering often gets in the way of information,” Gleb pointed out. “She showed me a scar from a bullet grazing her scalp, and a scar from her stab wound on her abdomen.” Well, that was a lot for one afternoon. When she had been on painkillers and alone with Dmitry, she had just wanted to watch movies and drool on his shirt. “This has never come up?”

Dmitry shook his head, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Anya and I aren’t exactly close.” 

“You share an affinity for getting on each others nerves,” Gleb commented. “But you both also seem rather obsessed with each other, so it’s hard to read.” Dmitry opened his mouth to dispute the claim of obsession on either side, but his roommate continued on, unbothered by the things he was saying. “How did you guys meet?”

“The foster system,” Dmitry said with a shrug. “Group homes, events meant to bring us together and showed us we were still love even though people always wanted to lease us, instead of keeping us.” He had spent a childhood with a father who loved him, so the experience of bouncing from home to home had never truly bothered him. Becoming a part of another family, like that, seemed like a betrayal to his father. “She got placed with the three other girls, who had been in the system about the same time as me so we were well acquainted by the time Anya came along. And she became one of them.” 

Gleb nodded, actually taking notes on this conversation. “And where was that?” 

“Rochester,” Dmitry answered. “Why are you writing this down?” 

“Don’t you think it strange that Anya just appeared one day, with no memory, and no ties at all?” Gleb asked him.

Well, yes, but he had been seventeen and people always appeared out of nowhere with different traumas. The amnesia was certainly interesting, but didn’t necessarily set Anya that far apart from everyone else. “It was foster care, we all had interesting backstories.” And then, “I find a lot of things strange about Anya in general.” 

Though, now at twenty-three, he was questioning a lot of things about her existence. 

Gleb nodded, “It’s just a...puzzle, you know?” 

“A puzzle she asked you to solve?” Dmitry ventured, because he supposed her spending the afternoon pretending to care about the War of 1812 only to turn around and ask a favor of a private investigator made more sense than anything else about this. 

“Not exactly,” he was slow to admit. Well, that was interesting. “I’d appreciate your discretion, in mentioning any of my questions to the girls.” 

“Be careful,” Dmitry warned, “Don’t bring any trouble on them.”

Trouble, after all, had always followed Anya anyway. And it seemed like poking at the hornet’s nest of her past could only open the floodgates of more. 

But now Gleb had peaked his interest with this information, the information he probably should have known by now, but didn’t. He could always put a stop to it later if it seemed to be heading somewhere bad.

-

“Why do you keep staring at me like that?” Anya asked, suspiciously. 

Dmitry hadn’t been aware he had been staring at her, or that he had been doing so in any sort of manner. Still, he focused his attention again on the process of making omelets. 

He had knocked on the girls’ door that morning, to only find Anya in residence. She had grumbled something about him making her get up to answer the door on her crutches. But she had let him in. 

She had looked so grumpy, standing barefoot, on crutches, her blonde hair mussed from sleep and wearing shorts with an oversized blue sweatshirt. (Oh wait that had been his, at one time. It looked like one of his New York Rangers sweatshirts, turned inside out. He still had no idea how his clothing often ended up in the girls’ outfit rotations.) He found himself making coffee and breakfast for her. 

Now she was hovering behind him, balanced on crutches. “What did Gleb want to talk to you about the other night?” 

“Maintenance issues,” he said, smoothly. 

Or maybe not, because she made a face at that. 

“Did he tell you that I said you were hot?” She asked, and he burned the tip of his finger on the pan. “Because I didn’t, not really.” 

Dmitry regained his composure, temporarily forgetting all the disturbing information his roommate had unloaded on him and focusing now on this turn of events. “You think I’m hot?”

“No,” she hissed. “I said I think you know you’re hot.” 

He blinked, because that was some linguistic gymnastics for her to say exactly what she said she wasn’t saying. 

“And that you’re annoying,” she added, when he didn’t respond to that. “And I said he was hot, too. I was on painkillers.” 

Dmitry poured a cup of the now ready coffee and set it on the table, and motioned her away. She made another face at him, but hopped over to the table on her crutches, before maneuvering herself into a chair and letting her crutches fall haphazardly to the floor. 

“Wouldn’t that be awkward though?” 

Anya was looking at him suspiciously again, and took a sip of her coffee before answering, “What?”

“If you dated my roommate,” Dmitry said, “All the while daydreaming about how hot I was while the three of us are in the same apartment together?” 

Her scowl was fierce, “I think you both have ugly personalities.” She cradled the coffee mug in her hands. “And if I didn’t want breakfast, I’d pour this all over you.” 

“Hey Anya,” he began, as he set the omelet down in front of her and provided her with a fork. No knife or any other utensil, as she seemed posed to use anything extra as weapons at the moment. “You’re so beautiful when you’re angry.” 

“And here I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever pay me a compliment,” she said, digging into her food. “But, to give you warning, you are so done for when my leg is all healed, Dmitry Petrovich.” She shooed him away, “Now, go away, I’ve gotten what I wanted from you.” 

“Such an ungrateful brat,” he said but the words came out far more fonder than he would have liked. “Gleb’s already left for the day, so your romance will have to wait.” 

She seemed to be seriously considering throwing a fork at him. And he should probably stop, before she actually got it in her mind to date his roommate as some part of revenge scheme on Dmitry. 

Her friendship with Vlad had been annoying enough. 

Then, on a little bit more serious note, “Text if you need anything.” 

“Like I’d need anything from you,” she muttered, while drinking the coffee he had made and eating the breakfast he had prepared for her. 

But, still, he managed to get the last word in, “I didn’t say text me!”

And then he left to go to work.


	7. Chapter 7

Anya was trying very hard to not keep a mental list of things she missed while she was apartment bound. She had been aware, but not really aware, of how busy she kept herself until she was stuck at home with a broken leg. All the books she had collected throughout the years but had yet to get around to reading were now read. She had even signed up for a Kindle Unlimited free trial to read whatever they had on there. She had mastered multiple levels of MarioKart, and had re-connected with several people she hadn’t talked to since moving to New York City. 

She had convinced Gleb to play board games with her the other day, though the only games he would play were Risk, Battleship and Clue. Clue, ended with her throwing a fit because he had such an unfair advantage and kept winning within the first three rounds. 

She missed going out, being in the crush of people. Meeting new people, making connections, learning new stories .She missed the pulse of music and hearing the laughter of her friends amongst it. They always made sure someone was home with Anya when they went out. Whether it was one of the girls, Gleb, and occasionally Dmitry. She knew she was being babysat, and hated it but hated being alone too much to protest. If only her stupid brain wasn’t so broken all the time. She also really missed the art of kissing. 

“Anyok,” Paulina said, by way of greeting. She climbed over the top of the sofa, to sit beside Anya. She set a bowl of popcorn down on Anya’s lap.

Anya popped one in her mouth, and then asked, “Do you want to make out?” 

Paulina leaned over and pressed a wet kiss against Anya’s cheek, “I’m getting a cold so that’s all you can get from me. Is the new neighbor not good for kissing?”

“He’s very rigid,” Anya sighed. And despite his handsome face, she had never felt the slightest urge to kiss him. “I don’t think I understood liking someone like a brother until I met him.” 

“The last guy I kissed, kissed like a fish,” Paulina said, taking control of the remote. She sucked in her cheeks to demonstrate, “And he gave me this cold. All risk, zero rewards.” 

“Tragic,” Anya sighed. “Was he cute, at least?” 

“Not as much as he seemed when I had alcohol in me,” Paulina said, with a shudder. She selected a movie to start playing. “You know who you don’t regard as a brother that you can kiss?” 

It was Anya’s turn to shudder. “I’ve already kissed Dmitry. I don’t recycle.” 

Paulina raised an eyebrow but didn’t call her out on that obvious lie. So, Anya had recycle a time or two in her life. New York City was small for a town so large. 

“You kissed him when you guys were teenagers, it hardly counts,” Paulina claimed, waving her hand as though it waved away the act itself. “And it was a dare, so it really doesn’t count.” She poked Anya on the side, “Think of what it could be like with intent.” 

He had been fairly skilled at seventeen, while being caught off guard. But this was definitely nothing that Anya would or had ever thought about. At all. Ever. 

“You should see all the ego boosts he gets at work,” Anya said. “He doesn’t need any more.” 

Paulina shrugged, “It’s a thought, zaya.”

She almost grumbled that maybe Paulina should go kiss Dmitry but then she might actually go do it, and the thought of any of them kissing Dmitry was strange. 

“If you kissed,” Paulina used air quotation marks as she said the word kissed. “Think of how much less you’d fight.”

Anya gasped, because first of all, why would she deprive herself of one of her top sources of amusement? His jaw clenches and his dimples pop out whenever she annoyed him so. And second of all, “We kissed once and have been fighting since.” 

“Oh, I’m aware,” Paulina teased, “I just think finishing what you started with that stupid dare will improve your relations is all.” 

“Stupid dare?” Anya asked, “You guys are the ones that dared me to do it.” 

“We didn’t think you’d actually do it!” Paulina responded, which was definitely news to Anya. Her entire life seemed to hinge on that dare at the time. “We were teenagers, no one simply went up to the hottest boy we knew and just kissed him! We were just giving you a hard time.” 

Anya blinked, “After all this time, I kissed Dmitry for nothing?!”

She touched her fingertips to her lips as thought that would undo a six year old kiss. 

“Not for nothing,” Paulina laughed, “I mean you are the only one of us who have managed to kiss him.”

“Would you want to?”

“No, though he’s still one of the hottest guys I know,” Paulina said, pushing her finger against Anya’s chin when she made a face at that. “But he’s just Mitya now.” She could feel her friend shrug. “He was very upset when you kissed him on a dare.”

“Oh I know.”

Paulina shook her head, “Because of the dare part. Not the kiss itself.”

“And he told you that?” Anya was dubious about this. 

“Not exactly,” Paulina admitted, “but you should’ve heard the lecture he gave us after it happened.”

It didn’t really mean anything. “Boys and their pride.”

Paulina studied her for a long moment, “When your leg is a little better I’ll help you find a boy to kiss.”

Happy to be off the subject of Dmitry, Anya smiled at her. “At this rate, I would just be happy to see the outdoors again.”

“We’ll make arrangements then,” her best friend promised. 

Anya rested her head against Paulina’s shoulder and settled in to focus on the movie. 

-

It was always the same nightmare, when it came. Voices echoing through her mind. Speaking clearly and jumbled at the same time. She knew words that they were saying but nothing that they were saying made sense. A cold dark room. Sharp pain. Wet blood against her cheek. 

She woke up, sweat making her nightshirt stick to her. Her sheets twisted around her. Her throat sore from a scream she didn’t know she had been letting out. Her breath coming in short pants, and a racing pulse. 

Waking up from a nightmare always temporarily set her off balance again. For an excruciating moment, she was a teenaged girl again. No memory. No past. No idea where she was. Then it would slowly come back to her. Well, her recent past would. 

“Your nightmares are getting bad again,” Marfa commented, gently, as she walked into the room. She shut the door behind her and handed Anya a glass of water. 

She drank from it greedily, and attempted to pull the fabric of her shirt from her skin. “It’s the painkillers, I think.”

The bed dipped as Marfa sat beside her. Her brown hair was pulled back into a bun, and she wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Anya didn’t remember hearing her come in after she went back into her room after the movie with Paulina. 

Marfa smoothed back Anya’s hair. It felt distantly familiar. Strange to think Marfa was the closest thing to a maternal figure that she knew. She ached for something similar. Maybe she had been loved once by a mother in a different life. “Are you sure?”

Anya nodded decisively, “I don’t need to go back to therapy.”

“I didn’t say you did,” but Anya could feel the hesitation in the room. She had been to therapy throughout the first three years after her memory loss. She had done several different prescriptions, hypnosis, different styles of therapy. Her memory was under lock and key and she had no idea what or where that key was. “It’s just a terrifying thing to hear you go through.”

“I’m fine, I’m safe,” she said. It was a mental mantra she also repeated to herself whenever she woke up from one of her nightmares. 

“You are,” Marfa agreed, though it sounded more like a command when her friend said it. “And I’ll take down anything that would even try.”

“I do keep a pair of heels by my bed,” Anya offered. 

Her friend laughed, “I’ve missed you, Anya.”

“I’ve missed you,” she agreed. “Drop out of school just to be my friend full time.”

“Oh is that all you ask of me?” Marfa teased. She was quiet while Anya set the glass down on the nightstand and laid back down in bed. “Do you want to talk about them?” 

“Nothing to talk about,” Anya promised, and she was fairly certain this wasn’t a lie. It seemed silly now, once the nightmare had evaporated away to say what it was that terrified her about it. Scary voice? The unknown? “It’s all abstract.”

“Can we talk about this again if it keeps happening after your leg is healed?” 

“Sure,” Anya said, with a yawn. Happy to fall back asleep now that she wasn’t alone. “But they won’t happen so often once I’m better.”

There was no guarantee of this, but she liked to think they had gotten less frequent over the years. 

Marfa worried her lower lip, “You’ll tell me if anything changes?”

“Yes,” Anya said, knowing better than to roll her eyes as she said so. “Now go back to sleep.” 

She felt the sheets get fixed and Marfa slip under them. Marfa slipped her hand in hers before closing her eyes. 

Anya was safe and she was fine. And then she slipped into a dreamless sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

When Gleb arrived at his car, he was not expecting his neighbor to be leaning against it, waiting for him. Well, he would only be surprised if it were Anya due to her limited mobility. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see her. As she was the type to invite herself along or demand attention. In her charming way. However, this was the girl from before, that had invited him to dinner when she had come looking for Anya at his and Dmitry’s apartment. 

Maybe she just made a habit of leaning against cars and didn’t realize it was his. 

Gleb had never been one to believe in coincidences, and she didn’t seem like the type that would miss much.

“Marfa,” he said, by way of greeting because she hadn’t moved an inch since he first spotted her. 

“Vaganov,” she returned. “Why are you going to our group home in Rochester?” 

He was taken off guard, and was surprised she was able to do so to him. He hadn’t expected that she would know what he was doing. Or that if Dmitry was going to tell anyone, he would’ve told Anya, despite his protests of not being close to her, or whatever it was he was currently claiming about their relationship. 

But, he should have seen it. Marfa was the obvious leader of the four girls. 

“Dmitry tell you?” He didn’t bother to deny it, as he was well caught. 

Her eyes widened, and he could tell he had caught her off guard. Well, they were both doing poorly at the moment. “Dmitry knows?” Then she shook her head, discarding that train of thought for the moment. “I have friends back there, that think it’s weird when people start asking about Anya.” 

“So they report back to you?” 

“Yes,” she said, stepping away from his car. “Did she ask you to look into this?” 

“No,” Gleb admitted, because it was another easy thing to prove to be a lie if he tried it. “It just...doesn’t add up. The things she’s said.” 

Marfa looked up at him, unflinchingly. “And what, you’re bored?” 

Shamefully, a tiny part of him had been motivated by that when he started. “I’m concerned. She said someone had tried to kill her.” 

Given that Marfa didn’t react to that, he discerned that she was far more aware of Anya’s circumstances than Dmitry had been. 

“Well no one has for the past six years,” Marfa pointed out. “Maybe it’s best to let the past rest.”

It was a fair question, and seemed to be Anya’s own viewpoint. Fear of the unknown was a persuasive emotion. 

“Wouldn’t you rather see what’s coming, then be blindsided by the past?” Gleb asked her. 

She sighed, and he had a glimmer of hope he had caught her. 

“Two conditions,” Marfa held up two fingers. “One, you do this one thing to look into her past. You tell Anya exactly what you found and she gets to decide if you should continue or not. If you don’t tell her, I will tell her and trust me you’d rather deal with me than a potentially upset Anya.” He really had no choice in the matter. 

“Secondly?” 

She smiled at him, “Take me to lunch as a thank you for saving you from a useless road trip to Rochester.” 

Gleb unlocked the doors to his car, “How so?”

“Because she was only placed in Rochester because there wasn’t anywhere to place her where she was found,” Marfa told him, and before he could ask she answered his question, “She was found in Baldwinsville.”

Then she slipped into the passenger seat of his car before she could see him stumble slightly on his feet. 

Why on earth had Anya been found in his hometown?

-

It was difficult to keep from the very important topic on hand at bay while they drove to a restaurant, that was about a half a step above being a diner, and sat to order food. For starts, Gleb had to get his bearings. As it was, Marfa didn’t seem all that down with his investigation, and he thought mentioning he was born and raised in the town Anya had been found might push her back to the other side of things. 

The thing was, Gleb had left home when he was 18, enlisting in the Marines. He had served six years of active duty, and then returned home almost a year after his father died (his mother wouldn’t hear of it otherwise, and neither would have the Government, most likely) and then packed up and moved to New York. His communication with his parents had been efficient and fact base. His mother had never been one for gossiping. 

“So if she was found in Baldwinsville, why wasn’t she transferred to Syracuse?” Gleb asked, after a cup of coffee had been poured. 

Marfa shrugged, “I was fifteen, so I wasn’t given much insight into the state’s decision of where to place the new girl.” 

“I bet you would be now,” he commented, and she smiled at that. “So she was transferred to Rochester?” 

“Yes,” Marfa said, and the conversation paused as they ordered. “I’m impressed you waited until at least the coffee was poured to start asking questions.” 

“I don’t know how much more you would know,” Gleb said, though he did want to ask at least several dozen questions at once. He was aware, she may not have the answers for them. “Given you were fifteen and all.” 

“I don’t think she’s much different than she was before,” she commented. “Obviously, I didn’t know her but some things about her were fully formed when I met her. She was bold, and unafraid.” 

Well, not completely unafraid. 

“What do you think happened to her?”

Marfa shrugged- was no one as bothered by this mystery as he was? “I don’t know. We all had shitty backgrounds where we were, any number of things could’ve happened in her past.” 

“And you’re okay with her not knowing?” 

And here’s where Marfa hesitated. 

“She gets nightmares,” she said, finally. She was tearing the sugar packet she had emptied into her coffee into little pieces. “Sometimes, still. She likes to pretend like they don’t bother her, but they’re terrifying.” She dropped the tiny pieces of paper into a pile on the table. “Therapy never helped, so maybe knowing the source will.” 

“She’s a wonderful girl,” Gleb said. “Even when crawling out of her skin with boredom.” 

Marfa laughed, “She hates sitting still. Hates to be alone. This entire immobility has been havoc for her.” She held out her hand, “Give me your phone?”

“Why?” 

“So I can put my number in so you can keep me updated on what you find out when you go to Baldwinsville,” Marfa told him, and he unlocked his phone and handed it over. 

Gleb took his phone back, and the food arrived. “Am I reporting to you now?” 

“Absolutely,” Marfa said. “And, pro tip- next time you take a client out to lunch, you should really spring for at least two stars.” 

Well, that was a fair criticism, he supposed. But only if she were paying him for his work, instead of him doing it on his own free time and free will.

“Quality food comes from all sorts of establishments,” he pointed out. 

“Yes,” she agreed. “But I’m a woman with very fine taste.” 

Gleb arched an eyebrow, “Dmitry’s shown me your refrigerator. Or, rather, that box that holds the cold in your kitchen.” 

“So fine, it can’t be recreated at home,” Marfa countered. 

“Clearly,” he said. “Is there anywhere else you need me to take you today?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m going to make you work for the privilege.” 

Then she winked at him. There was an edge to her that Anya lacked, making her flirtations seem a little more dangerous.


	9. Chapter 9

It was so nice to be somewhere outside of home and the doctor’s office. She hadn’t been completely homebound but it was so hard to get around New York City on crutches, and every time she had attempted it had become an Ordeal. And while Anya liked being the center of attention and being dramatic, this had not been the way. But she was free of her cast, after six long weeks, free of her crutches, free to... go back to work. She scowled at her computer. There was quite a mess to come back to. 

Yulia and Sasha, the two girls that had covered for her while she was out, were absolute shit at scheduling. Anya’s eyes hurt from having to stare at the screen all day, and her contact lenses burned and she had to switch them out for her glasses halfway through her shift. She spent a good portion of her day having to reach out to clients to say, she was deeply sorry, but Dmitry couldn’t actually do 1:1 training with four people at the same time, and would another time or trainer work well for them? 

Then, about an hour before her shift ended, she discovered the paper log they had kept of appointments that they had never entered into the computer. Was she able to use her painkillers to treat this headache she had developed? Instead, she just pressed her forehead against the notebook she had just found, and let out a groan. 

There was the sound of a cup being set next to her, and then, “Is your leg bothering you?” 

“I wish,” she said emphatically before looking up at the cup, she knew who the voice belonged to. She was expecting it to be some gross green smoothie, but instead she saw iced coffee. “Oh!” She gasped, pulling the drink towards her, and finally looking up, “Dmitry!” 

He was leaning against the counter, one of those gross smoothies next to him. He blinked at her greeting, “That’s the most excited I’ve heard you greet me without painkillers.” He motioned to her, “Unless…?”

“You should just take the compliment,” she grumbled, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “And, no I’m not, which should tell you how my day has gone.” 

Dmitry chuckled, “Yeah my phone has chirped all day with calendar updates.” 

“Stop being so handsome and in demand, Dmitry,” she chided. 

“You really think I’m….” Dmitry trailed off, as a young, dark haired woman approached them. “Oh hey. What’s up?” 

“I was trying to get ahold of you,” the woman said. 

“Shit,” Dmitry said, and he patted his pocket before looking over at his office door, where his phone most likely was. “It’s been a hectic day here, so I’ve had it on silent most of the day.”

The woman’s gaze flicked between them, and Dmitry straightened from leaning against the counter. “I see.” 

There was a weird tension in the air. Anya took a sip of her iced coffee. It was stupid that Dmitry could get that right without even asking her. 

Dmitry finally recovered from...well, whatever it was there was to recover from. “Is everything okay?” 

“Yes,” the woman said, tucking her hair behind her ear, “There’s just been a huge break in the Romanov story, and I have to attend a press conference. I have to go to Philly, so I won’t make dinner. Do you want to reschedule for some time later?” 

“Sure, just text me what time and date- I’ll make sure to have my phone on again, Elizaveta,” Dmitry said. Oh, this was a date thing. She resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. Dmitry had dated before, of course. It would be difficult for him to be this attractive and charming (to others, at least) and not take advantage of having options. He had stopped bringing them around the girls though, as they would tease him without mercy. Or the girl he was dating would get weird and possessive about his friendship with four girls across the hall. “Isn’t the Romanov case like five years old though?” 

Elizaveta’s eyes lit up, which Anya felt to be a weird reaction to such a gruesome story. “You know how two of the bodies of the children were still missing when they combed the area?” Dmitry nodded and Anya pressed her hands to her ears, but she could still hear. “They found the remains of at least one of them.” 

Dmitry glanced over at Anya, oh good he remembered she was still there. “Are you okay?” 

“It’s just so gruesome,” Anya said. It was. The Romanovs were a wealthy and influential family in Philadelphia. Or, the had been until they had gone out to a family trip in the country and had been brutally murdered. Dismembered, their remains drowned in acid, and all sorts of details Anya couldn’t stand to hear. “And gross.” 

Elizaveta shot her a pitying look, “Anyway,” she directed her attention back to Dmitry, “They’re doing a press conference to say if it was Alexei or Anastasia, or both. Rumor has it that the grandmother is on her way back.” 

Oh good, they were still talking about this. 

“That is big,” Dmitry said in agreement. “Let me walk you out.” 

Elizaveta shot her one last look before she allowed Dmitry to walk her to the door. Anya let go of her ears and reopened the notebook to continue to untangle the mess her absence had made. 

A shadow fell over her and she knew Dmitry had come back. 

“Are you okay?” Dmitry asked softly.

Anya shrugged it off. It was just an upsetting tragedy to hear of. “Careful of that one, she seems like the kind that gets turned on by serial killers.”

Dmitry sighed, “You could try to be nice about at least one of the girls I’ve dated.” 

Anya tsked, “Maybe one day.”

“She’s a journalist, and it’s a good story,” Dmitry continued to explain to her. 

“You don’t have to justify your girlfriend to me,” she replied. 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Dmitry said and she looked up at him. He was closer than he was expecting. She resisted the urge to roll back. “We haven’t even gone out.”

She didn’t blink, “Okay.” 

“Okay,” he echoed. 

And it had gotten weird, which was strange because they had relatively gotten along just moments earlier. Maybe they were just incapable of being pleasant to each other. 

That was a lie. There were plenty of moments, especially lately, where they could quietly get along. They’d bicker but there was no escalation or bite behind it. Maybe it had been dulled by the painkillers. 

She broke first, “Thank you for the coffee, Dmitry.”

There, that hadn’t been so difficult. 

Dmitry stares at her for another moment, and then nodded and slipped back away to his office. 

What a strange first day back. 

-

Anya stretched out on the sofa, while Dunya painted her toenails a glittery blue. She hadn’t been able to get out of work on time, inputting the paper schedule had kept her past forty five minutes, and she was never taking another day off from work again. Well, at least not the kind where she’d have to return. Marfa had brought them back several salads from the restaurant she worked at, and had passed them around to the girls. 

Dunya’s was left untouched, while Paulina and Anya picked at theirs. Marfa had finished hers shortly after she opened it, and was leaning against the counter separating the kitchen and living room, scrolling along her phone. 

“Anya, you haven’t updated your instagram in over a month,” Marfa told her. “People probably think you’re dead.” 

“There’s nothing interesting about my life lately,” she complained, but pulled out her phone anyway. “I hate being uninspirational.” 

“Always so particular about your social media,” Paulina teased. 

There was nothing wrong with being discerning about it. She would never say so to Paulina, but having to click through 25 to 30 instagam stories of hers a day was a bit exhausting. Anya pulled up a photo of her and Gleb she had made him take with her the other week. There, a hot guy was always inspirational. 

“Wow, they found the remains of one of the missing Romanov children,” Marfa said walking over to lean against the back of the sofa. “The boy.”

There was the sound of the door opening. 

Dunya frowned, “What happened to Anastasia then?” 

Anya shrugged, not eager to talk about this again. Or any other violent or bloody case in the history of ever. “Dmitry’s new girlfriend was talking about this earlier.”

“Dmitry has a new girlfriend?” Marfa asked, and Anya was glad for the change in subject. Kind of. 

“I have a date with a journalist that got postponed because she had to go to this press conference,” Dmitry said, sounding weary. But he sat on the sofa beside her. “Anya likes to jump to conclusions.” 

Marfa arched an eyebrow, “You haven’t had a date yet but she’s already met Anya?”

“Yeah,” Dmitry said, and Anya twisted around to hand off the remainder of her salad to him. That was enough vegetables for the day. “What, why?”

“Oh,” Marfa responded, looking angelic. “No reason.”

Dmitry’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at Marfa, but he brought the other conversation back. “So they only found the missing son?”

“Yeah,” Paulina said, setting down her half eaten salad and picking up Dunya’s untouched one. “Marfa was just telling us what the news said.” 

Dunya finished up on Anya’s last toenail and shook the bottle at Dmitry. “Want to match Anya?”

“Maybe some other time,” he told her, “I would hate to outshine Her Highness.” 

Anya shifted in her seat so she could turn to glare at him without risking pinching a nerve in her next, “I regret sharing my salad with you. And spending my entire day fixing your schedule.”

“Well one of those things is your job,” he pointed out, popping a cherry tomato in his mouth. 

“Next time you have three clients scheduled for the same session I’m just going to let them duke it out,” she pouted. 

“Weirdly I feel like I’ve missed them arguing about work,” Dunya commented, taking Paulina’s half eaten salad and starting on that. 

“I don’t know if it’s missing it so much as some sort of strain of Stockholm Syndrome,” Paulina teased. “But I’m glad your leg has finally healed.”

“You should see all the signs they have around the gym now about properly putting away any equipment you use,” Dmitry told them. He pointed his fork at her. “Your legacy.” 

“Ah, I’ll drink to that,” she said, she turned towards Marfa. “Where’s the vodka?”

Marfa set down her phone, and got up to go to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle. Anya was glad no one had yet gotten out of the habit of waiting on her. 

She took the cup Marfa offered her, and they toasted to Anya’s legacy. 

There, now everything could go completely back to normal.


	10. Chapter 10

“A little surprised to see you back here,” Ivan Zeldin commented as Gleb took a seat in Ivan’s office. 

Gleb checked to make sure the door was closed, “Me too.” When he first started his questioning about Anya, he wasn’t expecting that it would bring him back to his hometown. 

His mother had a similar reaction to Ivan’s, if not a little more sour. 

“I assume it’s about a case,” Ivan continued on, and Gleb gave a nod at that. “Though I can’t imagine what we have here that would interest you all the way over in the City.” 

“Anya Plisetsky,” Gleb said. 

And he had more to say, but was interrupted by Ivan letting out a low whistle. “Well there’s a name I haven’t heard in awhile,” Ivan shook his head. “You must have found your old man’s files.” 

This case was one surprise after another. And he hesitated, the last time he went searching into something that involved his father he had come back traumatized by the results. “What do you mean?” 

“Your father kept looking into the case after the Capitan sent it to cold,” Ivan said slowly, “If not your father, what do you know about Anya?”

“She’s my neighbor,” Gleb said, because there was little point in hiding that. And he was still thrown off by the mention of his father. “She mentioned her memory loss and lack of resolution in the case and…” 

Ivan clicked his tongue in understanding. They had been close, once. “You couldn’t help but start digging.” 

Gleb waved it off like it was no big deal, rather than his defining personality trait. “I started looking at the group home, and was surprised to find her placed here.” 

“You missed a lot when you enlisted,” Ivan said softly. Yes, six years and his father’s death to name a couple. “It was a big deal when she showed up.” 

He could imagine, the town was rather small. Not tiny, but nowhere near the bustling metropolis he currently lived in. “What can you tell me about when she showed up?”

Ivan sighed, and shrugged. “Not a lot. I was off at community college, getting my associates in Criminal Justice at the time. I’m sure if you find your father’s notes, you’d find out a lot more.” 

Gleb would deal with that mess later. His father kept impeccable records, but was rather secretive about it. The question wouldn’t be if his father kept his records, but rather where he kept them. 

“What did you know?” 

“She was young, a few years younger than us,” Ivan began, then pointed at his head. “Bullet grazed her skull. Chopped off hair. Infected stab wounds. Jagged scars along her back. Her face was rather puffed up, too, as though she had suffered from an allergic reaction.” 

More or less what he already knew from Anya’s medically induced rambles, but he wrote them down anyway. 

“And no leads on what had happened to her?” 

Ivan shrugged, “She couldn’t remember anything. Her fingerprints weren’t in the system. No one filed a missing report matching her description. At least none that went anywhere. It’s like she appeared out of nowhere.” 

“What did the Captain think?” 

“He thought she escaped from a domestic violence situation,” Ivan said, “Based on the nature and age of her injuries. As well as the mental trauma. He thought it was best if we kept it quiet, and let her go somewhere safe.” 

Gleb tapped his pen against his notepad in thought. It wasn’t an outlandish conclusion to come to. There was still something nagging on him. 

“So she never remembered?” Ivan asked. “I assume that’s why you’re here, on her behalf.” 

Well, technically it wasn’t on her behalf because she didn’t know, but it would be going into it too much to correct him. 

“No, she never did.” 

Ivan nodded thoughtfully, “Maybe the Captain was right, and it’s for the best she doesn’t.” A pause. “How is she?” 

“She’s great,” Gleb said honestly. She was a little dramatic, and outrageous and tried a little too hard to annoy his roommate, but a light had definitely come on when they had become friends. He pulled up a photo of them Anya had taken on his phone. “Here she is.” 

Ivan took the phone, “Much better than we last saw her here.” He squinted and did something to photo with his fingers. “It’s weird…” 

Gelb leaned forward, “What is?”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head, “Just something about her eyes seem really familiar.” 

“They are a rather startling shade of blue,” he commented, taking his phone back. “Did you not see them when she was here?” 

Ivan shook his head, and then typed something out on his computer. “No, her eyes-and face- were pretty swollen from an allergic reaction. Something in the woods, they thought, from when she was running away from whatever she was running away from.” 

The receptionist Gleb had seen earlier came into the room, holding an envelope and passed it along to Ivan, who thanked her. 

Ivan emptied the contents onto his desk, pulling up a photo. 

Gleb winced as he looked at it. The girl in the photo was only the slightest shadow of what Anya looked liked now. He handed it back to his old friend. 

“No one ever came looking for her?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Ivan said. “It’s like she was dropped from the sky. Have never seen another case like it.

“Well,” Gleb said, “if you think of anything else, please let me know.”

“I think you’ll find more in your father’s files than you’ll find here,” Ivan told him with a shrug, “He was a very persistent man.”

Gleb was well aware. 

“Thanks for your time and information,” Gleb told him with a nod. 

“If you solve this thing, let me know,” Ivan respondes. “It’s been a puzzle these past six years.”

And only kept getting more puzzling. 

-

Finding his father’s files was easier than Gleb would’ve thought. However, getting to them was nearly impossible when his mother was home. She was ridiculous suspicious of him coming home for a visit, when she should’ve been overjoyed by him making an appearance. He had heard that most mothers would be. 

“Why have you stopped by again?”

She had been standing in the doorway between the dining room and living room shortly after he had gotten back from the station. 

“I had some free time, and thought I should come home.”

Lia Vaganov arches an eyebrow at that, “If you have free time, Glebka, you are not working hard enough.”

He ignored that, as of course she would say that. “I also needed to pick a few things up from my room.”

“Everything is packed and labeled in the garage,” his mother told him. “The past is the past, I don’t know why you want to bring it forward with you.”

“Some things are a necessary evil, Mother,” he told her. Trips back to his childhood home were one of them. 

So, after dinner, he had found himself in the garage looking at boxes that were stacked neatly and labeled efficiently. 

And there it was. A box from his father’s study right there, labeled. Gleb couldn’t believe his mothers lack of sentimentality was the key to this case after all. 

He opened the box, making sure his mother wasn’t in sight. She hated speaking of his father now, ever since his death. Hated his career and the fact that their son had followed in his father’s footsteps. He was certain she would absolutely not approve of his going through his father’s notes. 

And there it was. A notebook and in Cyrillic he could recognize the name Anya. And when he opened it...it was all in Cyrillic. Well, fuck. 

The thing is that his mother refused to look in the past. She lived in America now, and English was the only useful language Gleb needed to read and write in. His father had taught him well enough to speak the language, but Gleb had embarrassingly struggled with learning with the written aspect of the Russian language. He could recognize familiar phrases and if he concentrated hard enough maybe- just maybe, he could break down some of the sentences. 

Fortunately, he lived in Little Odessa so he was sure that he could find someone who could translate it for him. However, finding someone he trusted would prove to be the most difficult. 

His mind wandered, wondering if Marfa was able to read Cyrillic. Then an image of them, their two heads together as they poured through these notes flashed in his head and he felt vaguely uncomfortable. 

Gleb made himself focus again, and took a box of his stuff, emptying it on the floor and replacing the items with his father's supplies and placing his own items into his father’s box. His mother was nosy so he could never be too careful. 

He was disappointed to find he wouldn’t have a clearer picture tonight of what was going on and what had his father known about Anya. And why was he so intertwined with the past of a random neighbor he had? 

He had promised his mother he would stay the night and get breakfast with her in the morning. And then he could start the long journey back to Brooklyn. 

Gleb looked down at the top notebook before he covered the box up. What the hell was he going to find out?


	11. Chapter 11

It was Saturday night, so Dmitry had very low expectations that any of the girls would be home when he dropped in. This was a game they played with him where they’d let their food supplies whittle down to nothing, and he’d come over and grow more and more anxious about it, and eventually one of them would have to break and buy food for the apartment. (It was almost always him. Marfa had a very relaxed attitude behind it- ‘we’ve survived on less, Mitya, it’ll be fine’ and his response was always ‘yes- but we don’t have to now’.) 

However, when he opened the door and set down the bag from Netcost Market, he found Anya on the sofa, looking like she was dressed to go out but not actually out. 

“Did you re-injure your leg?”

She kneeled on the sofa, resting her chin against the back cushion, “No, it’s lame to go out this early.” Anya eyed the bag he was unpacking, “Is it grocery day?” 

“It’s Dmitry’s too nice to you day,” he told her, pointing a jar of pickled cucumbers with hot peppers at her. 

“If you were nice you’d bring me zefir, instead of pine nuts and Bite bars,” Anya responded, but she climbed over the couch- which didn’t seem smart considering she just recovered from a broken leg, and walked over and hopped onto the counter, peering into the bag. 

It’s because he was nice he didn’t buy her a diet of marshmallows. 

“I bought you chips, does that count?” 

She looked at him suspiciously, as though he was going to pull out some sort of trick bag of chips that were actually some sort of healthy thing. “White mushroom and sour cream?” 

He shook his head, and pulled out the bag to toss to her, “Do you think it’s my first time shopping for you?” 

Anya gasped and clutched the bag to her, “It’s moments like this I really do like you, Dmitry.” 

“Is that all it took?” Dmitry asked her, putting away the last few items. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve bought you chips before.” 

“Maybe I’ve liked you this whole time,” Anya told him, peering into the empty bag and frowning. If she wanted sweets, she could go purchase sweets on her own. “But you make it so fun to be mean to.” 

“Is that what it is?” 

She shrugged, “Who’s to say?” 

“So what have you been up to, waiting for the appropriate time to go out?” 

She pointed at the television screen, “TV.” 

“Hopefully not another military or war documentary,” Dmitry teased, he took both her hands in his to help her hop off the counter. 

Once she was back on the ground, she tilted her head to look up at him. Standing barefoot in her kitchen, no heels and no crutches, and not sitting down like she usually was at work, he was reminded of exactly how much shorter than him Anya actually was. 

“God no,” she giggled, tugging on his hands to pull him over towards the couch. “Have you watched The Circle?” 

“I no longer have control over my television,” he pointed out, as she let go of his hands as she fell back on the couch. “But probably not if I did anyway.” 

“Aren’t you cool?” Anya said, patting the seat next to her. He supposed he was staying. “Are you going out tonight?” 

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he responded, and sat on the sofa next to her. “Why?”

She reached over, her fingers dancing over the open zipper of his jacket, “This is a going out jacket.”

“It went out to the market,” Dmitry told her. “What about this going out dress?”

“All it’s friends went and got lives while I was down and out so they’re probably coming out later,” Anya told him. 

“So you’re bored.”

“No,” Anya shook her head and they were sitting quite close. Closer than they normally did. “What happened with the journalist?”

He glanced over at her, “She got her story.”

She rolled her eyes at him, “And your date?”

Oh, that. 

“Dead on arrival,” Dmitry told her, reaching over to tug on a curl of her hair. She arched an eyebrow. “You have a way of killing my potential relationships without meaning to.”

Their faces were quite close. 

“How?” She breathed but didn’t wait for a response before her lips were on his. 

Kissing Anya was like arguing with her. Spirited, thrilling and a bit of a battle. 

He was the first to pull away, but only a breath away. There was a noise from the hallway and they both froze as the noise passed going down the hall. 

And then her lips were on his again, doing what she always did-demanding more and more of him. A part of him seemed to have slipped away back when he was 17 and her lips had first touched his and she stole more and more of him until this moment when everything he was seemed melded together with every piece of her. 

He felt her small hands push down his jacket, once freed his hands came up to cup her face. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” She asked as though they hadn’t been exchanging them over the past few moments with every touch by their hands, and every movement their lips made. 

“Tell me all of them.”

Anya played with the hair at the nape of his neck. “They didn’t dare me to kiss you, years ago. They just dared me to kiss a boy that I wanted to kiss.”

Oh. That put a bit of a different spin on it. 

“I would’ve kissed you without a dare,” he told her. 

He would’ve, he can still remember her vividly walking towards him. The ill-fitting blue dress, the short honey colored hair, the sway of her body as she stood on the very tips of her toes to kiss him. 

“I know,” she replied,obnoxiously, but he let her kiss him again anyway. 

There was another noise that came down the hall, and movement paused. Just the sound of the increased intake and outtake of breath of them accompanied the noise as it faded back down the hall. 

It was probably time for the spell to be broken. 

But then Anya clung to his shirt and said, “My room has a lock.” He opened his mouth, because they should slow down and reason. Then she kissed and said, “Pazhalsta.” 

So Dmitry followed Anya into her room, shutting the door behind them and clicking the lock into place. She let go of his hand, stepping away from him. She pulled her hair off to the side. 

She looked over her shoulder at him, “Do you mind?” 

He stepped forward, tugging the zipper in the back of her dress down, and his thumb brushed against where the skin had puckered into scars. Anya pulled away, facing forward again, shaking her head. Nothing about that tonight. 

Then in a movement that mimicked that first move she made years ago, she got on the very tips of her toes and kissed him. 

Nothing with Anya ever went slow.


	12. Chapter 12

Anya woke up to harsh morning light, and a mouthful of muscle. She wondered if she should be surprised or in denial over her current situation. She decided neither were appropriate. She pulled her hair back, and rolled over to her back, squinting against the sun peaking through her curtains. Well, if the morning sun was shining with that much intensity it meant either the world was about to end or that it was way later than she wanted it to be. Well, fuck. 

“Why do you drool so much in your sleep?” Dmitry rolled onto his back.

“Stop,” she whined, wiping her mouth. “You’re supposed to think I’m fun, perfect and sexy.”

He laughed, and stretched his arm above her head. “I can think all of those things while you drool on me.” 

She tilted her head up to glare at him, and he dipped his head down to kiss her. She wondered if this should feel more awkward or weird than it did. But he pulled away and he was still just Dmitry. 

His fingers played with the ends of her hair. She rested her cheek against his shoulder. 

Anya listened for sounds out in the apartment and heard nothing. Maybe she lucked out and everyone was still abed. Or, even better, all of them had found other accommodations for the night. Otherwise, she was fucked because it was Sunday and it was traditionally a day where all of them hung out in the living room bonding. 

“Do you think anyone’s home?” Anya whispered to him. 

“Oh shit,” Dmitry covered his face with his hand. “I just remembered Gleb is at his mother’s and my apartment is completely empty.”

She sat up and slapped him on his bicep, “You mention this now?” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting as well. “I wasn’t really expecting last night to turn into this.” He gestured between them. 

Well according to everyone else they should’ve expected the inevitably. 

“I’m unpredictable,” Anya told him and kissed him before grinning at him. She pressed a finger against his lips before he could say anything rude. “I should get up before anyone else does.” 

“Would that be so bad?” Asked poor, naive Dmitry. 

“Yes,” she hissed. “I’m delicate, I can’t handle the teasing.”

Dmitry rolled his eyes, “But you tease more than anyone else.” 

“I know,” she told him. “Do you know what sort of karma I have coming my way?”

He laughed, and she hit him in the face with a pillow, as she got up. She pulled on the first t-shirt and pair of shorts she came across in her dresser. But she crawled back on the bed to give him one more kiss. 

She sighed, “Get dressed, I’ll go see if the coast is clear.” 

“Aye aye, Captain,” he saluted her from her bed. He didn’t look as ridiculous as he should against the deep pink of her bedspread. 

He was so attractive, it was really unfortunate. She sighed, and opened the door, only slightly so she could slip out and closed the door behind her. And was met with three pairs of eyes on her. She knew the quietness of the apartment should have made her suspicious. 

“Anya,” Marfa, of course, stepped forward. “What is the only real rule we have here? We don’t bring hook ups back to the apartment.” 

This was a good and solid rule they had always had. Don’t bring hookups back to the apartment and let them know where you live. If you actually started dating and reached the point where you wanted to bring them home, they could discuss it. 

None of them had yet to reach that point in the past three years.

Well, technically she wasn’t lying when she said, “I didn’t bring a guy back to the apartment.” 

“Anya, darling,” Paulina placed her palm against Anya’s cheek. “We are not stupid nor deaf.” 

Well, clearly Anya was as she hadn’t thought anything out the night before. She had just...acted instinctually. As always. 

“I know you’ve had a tough few weeks,” Dunya added to this guilt trip. She supposed she was in violation of the sacred house rule. However, Dmitry also had a key to their apartment after an unfortunate incident, or several, of them locking themselves out of the apartment. So it’s not like he had access to their apartment because she slept with him. “And I’m happy you found someone to hook up with….” 

“But you can’t endanger all of us like this,” Marfa lectured. 

“I-” Anya opened her mouth, though she had no idea what to say. The truth would probably get her out of hot water but…

It was moot anyway, because her door opened and Dmitry stepped out. 

She turned around, and pushed against his chest. “You’re useless!” 

She could hear her roommates fall into giggles, as Anya maneuvered around Dmitry to shut herself in her bedroom. 

She heard Marfa cat call him and Dunya ask for a high five. 

Then she heard Paulina call out to Dmitry, “You’re not even going to make us breakfast?” 

Oh God, this was going to be even worse than she imagined. Anya crawled back into bed and put her pillow over her face. 

-

The stand off between her and her roommates lasted about two hours before Marfa broke into her room and the other two followed her in. Paulina fell to Anya’s right side on the bed, and Dunya to the left side. Marfa crawled onto the bed and sat across from her. And then she grinned at Anya. 

Anya threw her hands up dramatically, “Okay, let’s hear it.” 

“Nothing to hear,” Paulina said, wrapping her arms around Anya’s right one, and pressing her cheek against her shoulder. “I’m just really happy for you.” 

Dunya tugged on the sleeve of Anya’s t-shirt, “Do we get to hear all the details now?” 

“No!” 

Her friend gasped, “You’ve never held back on us before.” 

“You never knew who I slept with before,” Anya returned. “I tell you anything, the next time you look at Dmitry, you’ll give away everything I told you.” 

“You were very vocal in telling him stuff last night,” Paulina told her, “I’m sure he already knows.” 

Was she blushing? Anya couldn’t remember ever blushing before? 

Marfa reached over and patted Anya on the knee, “This is the other reason why we don’t have sex in the apartment.” 

Anya rolled her eyes, “Clearly I didn’t think it through.”

“Nor should you have,” Marfa told her. “I mean, besides the basics. You guys have thought too much for far too long.” Her friend cleared her throat, “I do have to ask though, what are your intentions towards our Mitya?” 

“Oh God,” Anya pulled her legs up, and pulled her arms free so she could cover her face with her hands. “This is why I never hooked up with Dmitry before.” 

Marfa pried her hands off her eyes, “It’s fine. Have fun.” She leaned over and kissed Anya on both cheeks, “Stay safe.” 

“Yes mother,” Anya said, relaxing her legs back down. She exchanged a look with Dunya, and they both giggled. 

“We’ll figure out the other thing later,” Marfa told her. “I’m going to finish up my paper before our movie night tonight.” 

“I should start heading out for my hair appointment,” Dunya announced after Marfa left. She gave Anya a thumbs up before she left her room. 

“I’m going back to bed,” Paulina told her. “I only got up early this morning to be a part of the inquisition.” 

“You guys are all so wonderful to me,” Anya said, with several layers of sarcasm. 

She supposed she had something of her own to do, given that things could so easily be misconstrued or made awkward or weird. But still, she waited until she heard the door to Paulina’s room close before getting out of her own. She pulled her hair up into a sloppy ponytail, but didn’t bother putting on shoes, as she crossed the apartment, and then the hall before knocking on the door to Dmitry’s.

He answered it a moment or so later, freshly showered and in jeans and a t-shirt. Well, that made this a lot easier. 

“Hey,” he greeted her softly. 

“Hey,” she returned, slipping past him into his apartment. Anya tilted her head up to look at him. His height always made things so difficult to pull off. Or, rather, her height did. “So, I heard you had an empty apartment?” 

Dmitry solved the issue their height difference caused, by lifting her up to kiss her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, as he spun her towards the direction of his bedroom. 

This was a very good way to spend a Sunday morning.


	13. Chapter 13

Gleb returned back to Little Odessa, back to his apartment building early Monday morning to find Anya in the hallway, barefoot and seeming to come from his apartment rather than his own. Despite his normal inclination, he thought this was one instance where it was better to not ask questions. As it was, it did not take a great power of deduction to figure out what was going on. 

“Gleb!” She exclaimed when she saw him, and he felt himself being pulled into a hug. Anya seemed more happy than startled to find him here in the hallway in the middle of her short walk of shame. “How was….wherever you’re from?”

“Over by Syracuse,” he said, because it was early and he didn’t know how she’d react to randomly dropping that he was from the same town she had been found in. “It was good. I hadn’t seen my mother since I moved here.”

Anya regarded the box in his arms, “Childhood stuffed animals?”

He let out a strained laugh, “I will never tell.”

She gasped, excitedly, “Regardless, now, that is what I’ll imagine.”

Gleb shifted the box in his arms. It felt heavier in her proximity. 

She stepped forward, pulling his keys from his hand. “Let me help you.”

“Wait,” Gleb said. He didn’t actually have anything to tell her yet regarding what he had been doing or how she was involved. But he did have a question for her. “Do you know if Marfa reads Cyrillic?”

Anya laughed, “God no, she never had the patience to learn.” The group home had been run by the Russian Orthodox Church, she had once explained to him. So they all had extracurricular studies to keep up with their ancestors. “Except for a few good swear words.” 

Well, that sounded about right. 

“I see.”

“Are you looking for someone that can read it?” She asked him. 

Gleb hesitated because he didn’t know how to deal with the awkwardness if she was going to offer. Finally, he couldn’t find a good lie to tell. “I’m looking for help with translation.” It pained him to say, “The written portion of Russian was never my strong suit either.”

Anya unlocked his door for him, setting his keys on top of the box. “You should ask Dmitry to translate. He’s probably the most fluent one of us.”

“Thank you,” Gleb told her as she opened the door for him. “I’ll ask him.”

His roommate, he supposed, was the second best choice given that Marfa couldn’t help. 

“Welcome back,” Anya told him. “Have fun with your teddy bears.”

Gleb shook his head and went into the apartment. 

-

The issue with asking Dmitry to do a favor is that he actually had to track down his roommate to ask him for it. That morning he had only seen him for a half a moment before he had left on his morning run. Then Gleb had to leave for his actual work before Dmitry came back. He saw his roommate, briefly in the hallway outside their apartment, after he had come back from work. Dmitry’s mouth had been fused to Anya’s, and neither of them seemed to have a care that they could move five feet in either direction and be in the privacy of either of their apartments. 

He hadn’t seen him during dinner, and then had only seen him when he had gone to change for his evening run. Honestly, he hadn’t really expected to see him after that at the rate they were going, but eventually his roommate appeared, not in the midst of leaving, and alone. 

“Hey,” Gleb said, walking out to the kitchen where Dmitry was leaning on the counter, chewing on sunflower seeds. “So Anya was found in my hometown.”

Well there really was no way to say it other than to just come out and say it. 

Dmitry coughed and cleared his throat before responding, “What?”

“I was talking to an old friend of mine on their force,” Gleb continued on. He knew he only had access to Dmitry’s attention a limited time before Anya or one of the other girls would demand it. “About the case when she first showed up.”

“What did they find?”

“Not a whole lot,” Gleb admitted. “Eventually they turned her over to CPS and that’s around the time you met her.”

Dmitry nodded. “So you got nothing?”

“Not nothing, I don’t think,” Gleb continued on, heading back through the living room and into his bedroom where he had left the box of his father’s belongings. Dmitry followed him. “My father was also a private investigator and seemed to look into the case separately.”

He pulled out the notebook and handed it to Dmitry. 

Dmitry ran his hand over the Аня on the cover, and then opened the first page, his eyes scanning quickly before looking up, “It’s in Cyrillic?”

“Yes,” Gleb nodded, “Embarrassingly, it’s not something I am fluent in. I can read some but it would be a painstaking process and I had heard you were the strongest out of your group there.”

“Well…” Dmitry paused to consider it. “Yeah, probably. Who told you that?”

Well, that was the other embarrassing part. “Anya.” Dmitry raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t tell her what I needed it for, just I needed some help translating Cyrillic.”

Dmitry snorted a laugh, “And she volunteered me? How lazy when she can read it just as well as me.”

Well he supposed he had lucked out in that measure then. It would’ve been an awkward conversation. Though, maybe she should be the one reading it. 

“I can see what I can do, but you should tell her.”

Gleb nodded, “I just wanted to know what was in the journal first.”

Dmitry looked back down at the first page, his eyes going back and forth as he read the page. He spoke the words out loud softly, too softly for Gleb to really understand. He frowned and turned the page, reading further ahead. Then he slipped ahead about a third of the way through and then read some more. 

“What is it?”

“It’s very weird,” Dmitry said, looking up. “Is it possible that your dad just wanted people to think he was looking into Anya as a cover?”

Well, considering all the effort he put in to make his research less accessible to others, it was possible. “What do you mean?”

Dmitry flopped back to the first page, and turned it around to show Gleb. His father clean, precise handwriting in his native language. He pointed to a specific word. Рома́новы. 

“Romanov,” Dmitry then translated for him before Gleb could get there himself. “He just talks about the Romanov murders for pages and pages. Nothing about Anya that I can see.”

“Ivan was so certain my father had been working on Anya’s case,” Gleb said, his shoulders sagging. “It could have been a cover.”

“I mean, I’m sure it’s dangerous to look into the Romanov case,” Dmitry said, with a shrug. “Maybe looking into the past of a 15 year old girl seemed like a safer thing to appear to be looking into.” 

There was still something not quite right about this. “We lived over by Syracuse. The Romanov murders happened almost 300 miles away. Why would he look into this?”

“Wasn’t it unsolved for awhile?” Dmitry asked, and Gleb...well, he didn’t really know. This had all happened while he was in the Marines and only got certain information about what was going on back home. “I’m sure it’s fascinating to anyone who likes to solve mysteries.” 

“I suppose,” Gleb agreed.

Dmitry opened up close to the middle again, his eyes scanning the page. “I’ll read through it, still, if you want, when I get a chance. He could switch cases somewhere along the way.” 

“If you don’t mind,” he said. There was still something not quite right about any of this. It was never good to leave a stone unturned. 

There was a sharp knock on the door, and he heard someone walk in. Gleb and Dmitry left his bedroom to find Marfa standing in the living room. 

“Boys,” she greeted them. Then she addressed Gleb, “What did you find?” 

Dmitry slipped into his room with the book, setting it on his bookcase. 

Gleb resisted the urge to sigh, “Apparently nothing.” 

“Well, that’s that,” Marfa said, throwing her arms up. “Now, we need you both for game night.” 

“Oh God, no,” Dmitry groaned, “I can’t do one of those again.” 

“Anya’s on Dunya’s team,” Marfa continued on, as though Dmitry hadn’t objected at all. “You’re with Polly, and I get Vaganov.” 

Gleb looked towards Dmitry with alarm, who mouthed an apology but followed Marfa across the hall anyway. 

“Isn’t this grand?” Marfa said, opening the door to the girls’ apartment. “We’re finally evenly matched!” 

Gleb had never felt less evenly matched in his life than when faced with Marfa.


	14. Chapter 14

Anya showed up in the back gym half an hour after it closed. Her hair was in a braid and she wore a pair of black leggings with a blue stripe and one of his shirts that she had tied a knot on the bottom so there was a break between the new end of the shirt and her leggings.

Dmitry shook his head, “You look like you’re taking this seriously.” 

She twirled her braid around her finger, “This is my very serious braid, Sudayev.”

It has only taken three years of working at the gym to convince Anya to do anything regarding exercising even though she had a free membership this entire time. 

He reached over and tugged on it. “Oh, I see it now.”

Anya swatted his hand away, “Is mocking your clients part of your deal? Is that what makes them so eager to come back?”

“No I think that’s only your particular...thing.” 

She stuck her tongue out at him, “When do I get to start kicking you?”

Naturally, after years of trying to convince her to try different workouts it was the offer of kickboxing that she agreed to. 

“Never,” he responded. Management would be super unhappy with two work related broken legs in less than a three month span. “That’s what the heavy bag is for.”

Anya pouted at him,”You ruin all my fun.”

“You spent all last night kicking me in your sleep,” Dmitry pointed out. “Cherish the memories.”

“I wasn’t awake to appreciate the moment!” She countered. “This is just like when you wouldn’t teach me how to pick a lock.”

“Marfa taught you, you’re fine,” he told her. She was still a complete hazard to society. Well, her and Marfa both. All four of them. 

Anya pointed over to the heavy bag, “So how do I kick the bag?”

Dmitry places his hands on her shoulders, “Not fast, Princess. You have to stretch first.”

She tilted her head up to look up at him, “Are you this handsy with all your clients? I might need to start canceling more of your appointments if you are.”

“No,” he told her, and leaned down to give her a quick kiss on the lips. “But you’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous, and I’m cute all the time.”

Both points were debatable, or at least one was, but Dmitry let the subject drop, as he was about to teach her kicking boxing techniques and he had some sense of self preservation left. 

He pointed over to the mat, “Go stretch.” 

Anya saluted him, “Anything you say, Dmitry.” 

“I know from experience that’s not true,” he responded, but she did actually start stretching. 

And then she stopped. “Did Gleb end up asking you to translate something for him?” 

“Yes,” Dmitry said, “And I heard you threw me under the bus to do it even though you know someone else who can translate just as well.” 

She pressed her hand against her chest in mock offense, “Me, volunteer myself for homework? I didn’t avoid highschool thinking like that and it served me well.” 

He had only read the first few pages of it. The details weren’t even gruesome yet, just the history of the family. It felt invasive though, like he was peering into their personal diary. Though he supposed he was sort of peering into Gleb’s father’s personal detective note diary. 

Dmitry didn’t know much about the Romanovs other than the basics- they were a wealthy Russian-American family based in Philadelphia. They had their hands in government, local businesses and anywhere else where there was a pocket of power. They kept their children out of the public eye when possible. 

Vlad’s wife was a cousin of sorts to them. A first or second cousin, but raised close with Nicholas Romanov. She was a child of wealth who had married wealth and then divorced wealth and inherited half of her ex-husband’s assets in the process. She spent most of her time these days with Marie Romanov, Nicholas’ mother and the only one left surviving in that particular bloodline. 

Dmitry had only met Lily once, at her and Vlad’s courthouse wedding. She was not one that liked to come by Brooklyn often. 

“Are you going to finish stretching?” He asked her, because she had stopped to ask him about Gleb’s translation, and then never started again. 

Anya stepped forward, wrapping her hands loosely behind his neck, “What if we got french fries and milkshakes instead?” 

He made a face, “That sounds disgusting, Anyok.” She put her feet on top of his shoes and then tilted her toes up and kissed him. Getting her into the back gym and doing thirty seconds of stretches was far more than he had ever been able to get her to do before. He should enjoy what a victory that was, since clearly nothing else was going to get done today. “How about ice cream and then tonight you let me choose what to make for dinner?” 

She tilted her head as she considered it, before kissing him on the cheek and hopping off his feet. “It’s a deal!” 

Well Dmitry had more or less accomplished nothing. 

-

“I love that you’re dating Anya,” Marfa announced sliding up to sit on the counter next to Dmitry as he cooked. “It’s like nothing has changed except your flirting is more outright instead of fully cloaked in just bickering.” 

Dmitry supposed him and Anya were dating. It wasn’t actually a conversation they had, just a certain behavior they had fallen into around each other. It hadn’t been tested so it had that invincible feeling instead of a delicate one it could easily turn into. 

Maybe, eventually. 

“Thanks?” 

She reached behind her, grabbing the bag of white mushroom and sour cream chips he had gotten Anya last grocery trip. “Where’s your roommate tonight?” 

Dmitry arched an eyebrow at her, “Probably taking photos of people leaving hotel rooms. Why?” 

“No reason,” Marfa said with a shrug, as she crunched on a chip. 

“You’re not very subtle,” he teased, pointing his stirring spoon at her. 

“I don’t think you can be with a man like him,” Marfa returned. “Plus, you’re one to talk- you’ve never been very subtle either.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

She shook the bag of chips at him, “I’m sorry, who exactly did you buy these for?” 

“All of you apparently,” Dmitry responded. He moved away the stove to pull out five paper plates. “I’ve yet to hear a thank you for any of it.” 

“I’m sure Anya’s thanked you enough for all of us,” Marfa teased and hopped off the counter before he could swat at her. 

“You guys can’t use that forever,” he said, as he plated the food for all of them. 

Marfa leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, “Thank you, Mitya, you’re too kind to all of us.” 

He rolled his eyes, “You’re welcome.” He addressed the other three girls, “Dinner’s ready.” 

Marfa whispered something to them as she passed them on their way to pick up their plates.

Dunya grabbed her plate, then stood in front of Dmitry, and dipped down into a curtsy. “Thank you, Mr. Sudayev.” 

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath and looked over to glare at Marfa, who smiled innocently back at him before taking a bite of her food. 

Paulina took a plate, and twirled around before bowing to him, “Thank you, Dmitry Petrovich.” 

By the time Anya got to him, he was slightly terrified. 

But, she just reached over and grabbed the plate and frowned, “So many vegetables.” Her only request after ice cream had been ‘no stroganoff’ so she had lost all rights to complain of his choice. “Don’t worry I won’t thank you in the way Marfa told me to.” 

Then she turned around and sat back next to Dunya on the sofa. 

Dmitry grabbed his own plate and took a seat next to Paulina. 

At least some things stayed the same.


	15. Chapter 15

Lily Malevsky-Malevitch (Popov really lacked the lyrical quality she had come to enjoy in her last name) hated Brooklyn, especially this part of it. So much of the old world, no room for any of the new. She was half Russian, half French, and clearly one part of her heritage had won out over the other. She glanced over at her husband, though the other part of her wasn’t as dormant as she would like to think. 

“Look at it Lily!” Vlad had said when they stepped out of their town car at his old apartment building. She had never been to it before, during their whirlwind second chance romance, she had insisted he come to her Upper East Side apartment. “It’s charming!”

That was one word for it. She stubbed out her cigarette before she stepped into the door Vlad was holding open for her. “It looks like Little Odessa.” 

“Do you think Dmitry will be excited to see me?”

She laughed, “How could he not be, darling?”

Lily had only met Dmitry once, at the courthouse when her and Vlad had eloped. Her sister, Sophie, had been her maid of honor with Dmitry being Vlad’s best man. He was young and handsome, she could remember that vividly. If only she wasn’t so smitten with Vlad. 

They got off the elevator, and he pointed to one door. “This is where the girls live, hopefully you get to meet them, you’ll adore them.” Lily had never had difficulty getting along with people. She thrived on being the center of attention. 

He knocked on the door, and put his finger to his lips to tell Lily to stay quiet. They were surprising his old friend, after all.

Instead of Dmitry answering the door, however, a ghost did. The thing was, Lily had grown up close with her cousin, Nicky. This meant she had known his wife as long as he had. She could remember Alexandra Hesse before she had grown up, before the nips and tucks and subtle face lifts she had gotten done throughout her adulthood. And before she had begun to dye her hair in darker hues, to be taken more seriously as Nicholas Romanov’s wife. 

And maybe she was crazy, after spending all this time with Marie, and having to relive the entire ordeal of what had happened to her cousin’s family with the finding of poor little Alexei’s remains, and the question that remained of the fate of Anastasia, so her mind was stuck in that place. But the girl who answered the door, wearing an outfit Alix would never dream of wearing- an oversized sweatshirt and jeans with holes in them, her feet bare, and her dark blonde hair in a messy ponytail, had Alix’s face. The soft one from her younger years. And her eyes with the bright blue her cousin and his children’s had been. 

This was not a ghost, her mind was just overwhelmed by being surrounded by so much Romanov stuff lately. Marie saw their ghosts everywhere, it was only a matter of time before Lily did as well. 

She was staring, and had gone pale, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Reality had shifted and she was looking for something to ground her. 

It was fortunate that the girl- not a ghost- recovered first and gasped, throwing herself at Vlad, who picked her up and twirled her in the air. 

“Anya, darling!” Vlad set the girl back down on the floor. “Have I knocked on the wrong door?” 

Anya. Anya. What did Lily know about Anya? Vlad had chattered so much about so many things, there wasn’t enough room in her mind to remember it all. One of the girls across the hall. Her and Dmitry had some sort of game they had been playing for several years. 

“Of course not,” Anya responded, she stepped back to allow them into the apartment. Lily held onto Vlad’s arm, still not quite trusting herself as they walked in.

“Am I allowed to ask about it?” 

“Of course not,” Anya repeated. She looked at Lily, and took her free hand in hers. “You must be Vlad’s wife, Lily!” 

“I am,” she spoke, finding her voice. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Anya.” 

The name seemed foreign and wrong on her tongue. 

“Vlad used to talk about you all the time,” Anya continued on. The most disconcerting thing of it all were these familiar eyes staring at her as if she were a stranger. Though she was one. “You seem like the most fascinating woman.”

Lily forced a laugh, “He might have been blinded by love.” 

“He is a romantic,” Anya pointed out. She turned back to the man in question, “Dmitry didn’t tell me you were coming.” 

Vlad leaned in towards the girl, as though imparting a secret, “Dmitry didn’t know.” 

She gasped, “I love knowing things Dmitry doesn’t know.” 

“Well I’m glad some things never change,” Vlad said. “Where is that boy, anyway?” 

“He went for a run,” Anya said, pointing her thumb downward. “And he convinced Gleb to go with him.”

“What a sucker,” Vlad said, shaking his head. 

“All of us must go out tonight,” the girl announced. She turned her attention back to Lily. “Do you like to go out?” 

“Of course, what is life without a little drinking and dancing?” 

Anya squealed happily, clapping her hands together once. “I’m going to go tell the other girls, so we can start getting ready.” She pointed at Vlad, “You can throw in another surprise to Dmitry with the news.” 

“It’d be my pleasure,” Vlad said with a chuckle, and Anya hugged him goodbye, and threw a wave off to Lily. 

Lily allowed Vlad to take off her jacket before moving to sit on the sofa. It looked old and worn out, but at the moment she didn’t care. She just needed to....sit down. 

“Is everything okay?” Vlad asked her, sitting next to her on the sofa once their jackets were put up. “I know Anya is overflowing with youthful exuberance, but she really is a lovely girl.” 

It wasn’t that.

Lily turned her head to look at Vlad. Her fingers itched for a cigarette to fiddle with, but Vlad had already warned her how strict Dmitry enforced a no smoking rule. “How long have you known Anya?”

“Oh, it must be about three or so years now,” Vlad answered, stroking his goatee. “All four girls moved here from Rochester after high school graduation time.” 

Which would make her about 21. (Anastasia’s age. Then again, a lot of girls were Anastasia’s age.) 

“Do you think she looks familiar?” Lily asked slowly. She was having crazy thoughts that hadn’t even fully formed. But she supposed that’s what spouses were for. Even if her first husband hadn’t been for that at all. 

“No,” Vlad said, stretching his arm out behind her on the sofa. “She’s one of a kind.” 

“It’s just…” She supposed there was only one way to say it, so he could tell her she was being crazy and she could come back to sanity. “She looks a bit like Alix, don’t you think?” 

Vlad blinked, “Alix...Romanov?” His hand came to rest against her back. His tone was soft when he spoke next, “Lily, darling, I know it’s been a rough couple weeks. Finding Alexei, Anastasia’s fate still being a huge question mark for us all. You’ve spent so much time with Marie and her suffering, it has to be weighing on you. But Anya can’t be Anastasia.” She knew that, but she had just been so thrown when seeing Anya. “Anastasia grew up with her parents in Philadelphia. Anya grew up amongst orphans in Rochester.” 

Lily shook her head, “I know, I’m being irrational. Anastasia is….” She took a deep, bracing breath. None of them had been able to come to say what was most likely Anastasia’s fate. It seemed even more forbidden with the finality of Alexei’s. “I’m just starting to see them everywhere.” 

Her husband pressed a kiss to her temple, “It’s okay. We’ll go out tonight, get your mind off some things. Have fun.” 

That’s right. They were in the city to lighten her spirit, and not add to the heavy burden of it. 

-

The Neva Club had a beating heart that spoke to Lily as soon as they walked in, her mood had lightened. Dmitry had come back from his run, along with his handsome roommate, and that had already lifted her spirits. Vlad had made the announcement of their plans for the evening, which Dmitry tried to beg off of before Vlad had said who had made the plans. They left the apartment late, as Dmitry couldn’t find his jacket. Eventually he had given up, and they had ended up in the hallway with the four girls. 

Made up, Anya looked a bit different than she had in her casual wear earlier. Plus not being surprised by her appearance, and in a group had helped keep Lily grounded. She had time to process and it was all in her head. 

Dmitry had tugged on the sleeve of Anya’s jacket, and declared he had found his. He had also attempted to kiss her, but Anya’s hand had shot up, hovering above her lips and she pleaded with him to not ruin her lipstick. 

Oh, to be young and obnoxiously infatuated. 

The other three girls, had pulled Anya away and taken in Lily and left the three guys to follow behind them as they walked into the club. 

Lily had lasted three dances before she stopped to take a break. She wasn’t winded, but she was thirsty. She grabbed a Manhattan and joined Dmitry and Vlad back at the table. 

Lily slid into the seat next to Vlad, but addressed Dmitry, “You don’t want to go stake your claim on the dance floor?” 

Dmitry looked over where Anya was dancing with Dunya and Paulina, “No, I can’t keep up with her.” 

A few moments later, though, Anya showed up with four shots, and sat on Dmitry’s lap, resting her feet on the empty chair. “Shots for us all.” 

Lily and Vlad were probably too old for this shit, but they knew what they had signed up for going out with a group that was in their early to mid twenties. Anya finished hers first, then Dmitry, then Lily and then another beat, and then Vlad. 

Vlad wiped at his mouth, “Am I still not allowed to ask about this?” 

Anya widened her eyes, “Ask about what?” 

“Don’t ruin her fun,” Dmitry said, shaking his head. 

“So you all grew up in the same orphanage?” 

“Kind of,” Anya said, “It was several group homes done by the church.” 

More or less what she had said. 

Lily sipped her drink, and pushed on. She needed to set her mind completely at ease. “Dmitry, Vlad said you lost your parents when you were 8,9?” 

“Well my dad,” Dmitry said, “I lost my mom some years before that.” 

It was probably rude and awkward to ask, but they had all been drinking. “And, you grew up there as well, Anya?” 

Anya shrugged, “At least since I was fifteen.” 

Lily stilled, and could hear her heartbeat fast in her ears. “And...before that?”

“It’s weird,” Anya wrapped an arm around Dmitry’s shoulders, to lift herself up slightly and wave down the bartender. She kept her arm where it was as she settled back down, and finished her thought. “I just don’t remember my life before then.” 

Lily kicked Vlad, who choked on his vodka. He got ahold of himself, “I’ve never heard this story before.” he managed to address both Lily and Anya at the same time. 

“Has this never come up before?” Anya asked, leaning forward to smile at the bartender, who had brought her a fresh drink. 

“I think it’s only come up recently when you were on painkillers for your leg,” Dmitry pointed out. “There was some sort of incident and Anya showed up with no memory, no name…”

“And no one to claim me,” she finished for him. She took a large sip of her drink. “No big deal.” 

Anya set her glass back down, clearly over this conversation as though she hadn’t turned Lily’s world completely upside down. 

“Are you really not going to dance with me?” She pouted to Dmitry. 

“Are you going to let me ruin your lipstick?” 

Anya brought her lips very close to his, and then said, “Only after you dance with me.” Then she pulled away.

Dmitry sighed, as Anya stood up, and held out her hand. He placed his palm in hers, “I don’t trust her but I’ll be back.” 

Anya just grinned brightly at them as she pulled Dmitry out onto the dance floor. 

Lily felt claustrophobic in a way she never had to before. She took a deep breath and counted to 10. “We have to go.” 

Vlad nodded, and said quietly, “I honestly didn’t know.” 

She made it all the way to the town car before she started sobbing.


	16. Chapter 16

Once again, Gleb had found himself out and about with a group of people. It had happened more since he had moved to Little Odessa than he could remember ever happening in his teens or twenties to this point. At some point, after Anya had failed to get him on the dance floor (she hadn’t been able to get Dmitry out there, so he wasn’t certain why she thought she’d be able to convince him), Gleb had gone out to the smoking deck to indulge in a habit he tried not to partake in any more. 

He was a quarter of the way through his cigarette, when he found it being plucked out of his fingers, and Marfa took a seat next to him, taking a drag off of it. “This doesn’t seem to be your scene.” 

“I don’t think I know what my scene is,” Gleb responded. He used to think it was solitude. “This is probably not it, though.” 

Marfa took another drag, and then passed it back to Gleb. “It has its charms.” 

“And that’s why you’re sitting out here?” Gleb asked her, taking the last drag off and putting it out at the ashtray on the table. 

She smiled at him, “This has its charms as well.” Gleb looked down, and she laughed. “So Gleb, you never told me about your trip upstate.”

Gleb nodded, and took a sip of the beer he had brought out with him. “An old friend of mine works in the police station now, so I went to go see him. He didn’t know much, other than what we know.”

“I always thought she was a little woodland fairy dropped from the sky,” Marfa said, a fond smile on her face. “She doesn’t need to have come from anywhere.”

Marfa and Anya both had the same thoughts about her past. Don’t ask questions. Just keep moving, eyes forward. 

“Why don’t you want to know Anya’s past?” Gleb asked her. 

She reached over and took his beer to take a sip. “I was removed from my mother’s house the first time because she had a boyfriend that wouldn’t stay out of my bed. And then the second time because she had another boyfriend who wouldn’t keep his fists off of her. And the last time because of yet another boyfriend had introduced her to drugs.” Marfa shrugged and reached into her jacket pocket to pull out another cigarette. “Anya’s lucky she can’t remember. I always envied her for that.”

“So she forgets for the rest of you?”

Marfa wrinkled her nose, “A bit selfish when you put that way.”

“Oh we all have our moments,” Gleb shook his head. He wanted to ask her more questions about what she had said but he knew from his own intuition that she wouldn’t be open to responding. “He thought my father was doing his own investigation on Anya.”

“Ah,” Marfa said, knowingly. “Like father, like son.”

He shrugged, sheepishly, “Not so much. I found his notebook, he wasn’t investigating Anya at all. Just the Romanov murders.”

Marfa seemed to go completely still for a moment. But then blinked, taking another sip of his drink. “Why did he think he was investigating Anya?”

“The notebook said Anya in the front, for starters,” Gleb told her. “Dmitry thinks it probably seemed safer to seem like you are investigating where a 15 year old girl came from than whatever it was that happened with the Romanovs.”

It was still a bit unclear, even to this day what had happened. A disgruntled ex-employee on a rampage? Of that magnitude? Confession in hand, not many asked questions after that. 

“Dmitry?”

“It’s in Cyrillic,” Gleb explained. Then admitted, reluctantly, “I’m not so good at reading it.”

Though perhaps he should finally commit himself to learning it so he wouldn’t have to keep explaining his shortcomings to others. 

“Too bad you didn’t convince Anya to read it,” Marfa said. Gleb looked up because he had assumed Anya couldn’t read it after she volunteered Dmitry for it. But also translating Russian probably wasn’t something that seemed worth her time to Anya. “You know she always reads the last page first? She can’t stand investing in anything that’s not a happy ending.”

“Doesn’t that take the fun out of earning the ending?”

“She’s a big fan of the journey,” Marfa said. She stubbed out her half smoked cigarette. “Did you ever follow the Romanov massacre?”

“Not much of it,” Gleb responded. “I was in the Marines, so I didn’t hear about it until later on. You?” 

“Hard not to,” she answered. “Next state over, the kids weren’t much older or younger than we were. It was all over the news.” Marfa stifled a yawn,”You know what I found weird?”

“What’s that?” 

Marfa seemed poised to say something but then pulled back, shaking her head. 

“All of it,” she laughed, and shook her head. “What a topic!” 

A weirdly comfortable one, however. 

“Dmitry’s still reading through the notes,” Gleb informed her. “But he has a bit of a distraction going on at the moment.” 

“A good one,” Marfa said. “I’m truly happy for them.”

The door opened to the outdoor patio, and Gleb looked over back into the club and he could see where Anya had managed to get Dmitry onto the dance floor. Though whether or not they were actually dancing was up to a very loose interpretation. 

“Even when they’re obnoxious?”

“Yes,” Marfa said, rather emphatically. “There’s nothing worse than when your two best friends hate each other.”

“So they’re together for your convenience?” 

She reached over and finished off his drink, “It’s honestly the least they owe me for the past six years.” 

Touché. 

Gleb tapped on the empty beer glass. “Need another drink?”

Marfa shook her head, “I think I’m going to head back home.”

“I’ll walk you,” Gleb offered, eager for a reason to leave the club for the evening and not so eager to part with her company. 

She picked up her phone, sending out a text and slid it back into her jacket pocket. Unlike the other three girls, he couldn’t remember it being glued to her. Anya wore hers like an extension of herself. Doing everything she could on it. He’d seen her use it as a television, a book, a way to try to answer every question she verbalized, a way to prove Dmitry wrong and a way to capture moments. Paulina used hers like a camera, capturing every possible moment she deemed worthy. Which she did for a lot of them. He’d seen part of her camera roll, organized folders within organized folders. Dunya used hers a crutch, fiddling with it at moments that were quiet or awkward. 

“Thanks,” she said, and lead them back into the pulse of the club. 

They were almost to the doorway when Marfa stumbled, a pair of arms being thrown around her. 

“You’re leaving?” Anya’s face was flush and pouting. 

“Yes,” Marfa said patting her friend on the cheek, before stepping out of her embrace. “It’s late and Glebka will turn into a pumpkin if we don’t get him back soon.”

“Lily and Vlad left a while ago,” Anya informed them, well she was still mostly talking to Marfa. “They seemed upset.”

“Alcohol can do that,” Marfa replied. “Where are our other sisters?”

“Dunya left earlier, she has to work in the morning,” Dmitry answered. His arm wrapped loosely around Anya’s waist, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. “Polly went to check out another bar with another friend.”

Marfa nodded, seemingly happy they were all accounted for. She was like a leader. She never wanted to leave any of her troop behind. 

“You should come with us,” Marfa told them and Anya sighed in resignation. 

“If we must,” she said. 

“We must,” Dmitry agreed. 

The four of them stepped out into the New York night, the fall breeze had grown closer to a winter’s chill. Anya untangled herself from Dmitry and looped her arm with Marfa’s and rested her cheek against her shoulder. 

“What if we got some food?” Anya asked Marfa, much like a child asking permission from her mother.

Marfa padded her cheek fondly, “As long as you spend the night at Dmitry’s for when you throw it back up, you can do anything you want, Solnyshko.”

Gleb looked to Dmitry to see if he would protest this scenario of potential illness, but he mostly looked unsteady and like he, too, might not make it through the night without vomiting himself. Gleb was thankful for his highly effective earplugs. 

“Anything?” Anya asked, and spun out from the grasp she had Marfa in. She stood on her toes and twirled, Dmitry holding out a hand that settled on her back when she stopped. “Do you ever miss the ballet, Marfusha?” 

Marfa laughed, “I’ve never attended the ballet, Anya.”

Anya’s face settled into a frown, her mind hard at work. “We’ve been before.”

“In a dream, perhaps,” she responded. Marfa was studying Anya with an inscrutable expression as she said it though. 

Anya worried her lower lip between her teeth, leaving the bottom of her top teeth with some red on them. Her eyes foggy with something, but just as quickly she snapped out of it, turning towards Dmitry, wrapping her arms around his neck. He caught her easily and she buried her face against him. 

“It’s three am,” Marfa spoke up, breaking the odd silence that fallen on them. “We should skip food and get some sleep.”

“I agree,” Gleb spoke up, and Marfa looked away from Anya to exchange a look with him. 

Anya lifted her face up, standing on her toes again, this time to whisper something in Dmitry’s ear, causing him to laugh. 

“I might have some,” he told her after the laughter. “But tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow,” Anya argued, but now when she argued with Dmitry she smiled as she did so. 

They came back to the apartment building, taking the elevator back up to their floor. Gleb slipped back inside his apartment while Marfa and Dmitry had a stare down over where Anya was sleeping that night, even though the hallway was currently the best bet because she was half asleep already, leaning against Dmitry as Marfa and him spoke. 

Awhile later, he could hear multiple footsteps come into the apartment and he put his ear plugs in. Later in the morning he came out to the living room to find Marfa curled up on the recliner, and Dmitry and Anya stretched out on the sofa. 

He supposed that was a compromise of some sorts.


	17. Chapter 17

It was afternoon, and Dmitry hadn’t been awake for very long, when he heard from Vlad. At some point last night Vlad had texted that him and Lily were heading back to the hotel from the club, but he couldn’t really recall at what point of that night it had been. He had offered to let them stay at the apartment, but Vlad’s response had been a dozen laughing emojis and said Lily would never willingly spend a night in Little Odessa. Lily was a Manhattan woman through and through. 

Anya and Marfa has gone back to their apartment when they had awoke, about an hour before, to shower and become human again (their words), but had returned shortly after in comfortable clothes and asking for breakfast. The fact it was closer to lunch time meant nothing to them. 

Vlad had texted they’d be by shortly, and Dmitry had shrugged putting his phone away. 

“Are you going for a run?” Anya asked him, stealing a fork full of his omelet for herself. 

The thought of having to run made him feel queasy. “Not until tonight, probably.”

She made a face, and addressed Gleb. The four of them were at the counter in the kitchen, eating. Anya kneeled haphazardly on a stool, Gleb stood beside his stool. Marfa and Dmitry sat on them as intended. 

“How was your run yesterday?”

Glen shrugged. He didn’t really work out Iike Dmitry did but did have experience in doing such when he had been in the Marines. A run though Brighton Beach hadn’t seemed to phase him. “It was good to see more of the neighborhood.”

“Well if you ever need to see more beyond your television...” Marfa offered. 

Was that a blush creeping on his roommates cheeks?

There was a knock on the door, interrupting them and without waiting to be told to come in, Vlad opened the door, letting Lily come in before them. Dmitry was impressed he had even knocked. 

“Omelet?” Dmitry offered. 

“We have already eaten,” Vlad answered, though he looked longingly at their half eaten omelets. He, too, had often taken advantage of the fact that Dmitry cooked back when he had lived here.

Lily looked around, and started when she saw them, “You’re all here!”

“Not quite,” Marfa pointed out. As they were missing two roommates currently. Who had an equal chance of either being still asleep and hungover or sweating out their hangover at Bikram Yoga.

Unsurprisingly, Lily ignored her, “I have something I wish to discuss with you.”

Dmitry frowned, but he wasn’t quite certain which one she was addressing so he just took another bite of his food and looked at Vlad who gave a helpless shrug. This was turning in a strange visit.

“And I don’t know how to say this without seeming completely crazy,” she continued on. The four of them looked at each other, bewildered as to where this could possibly be going. Most of them had only met her yesterday, and Dmitry only once before. “But I think you might be Anastasia Romanov.”

All four forks dropped and a heavy air of confusion settled amongst them. Why was she talking about Anastasia Romanov? Then, all at once, three pairs of eyes looked over at Anya.

“Me?!” Anya’s voice held the high pitch of near panic when she asked. And then looked to the three of them for reassurance of how absurd this all sounded. 

Dmitry was poised to give it but then something clicked into place, at the same time it must have for Gleb because they looked at each other and the words slipped out, “The notebook.”

“What notebook?” The question was an echo between Lily and Anya. 

“This is hard to explain,” Gleb began, as this had been his...project. “It’s just you didn’t know who you were and it got my professional curiosity, then Marfa mentioned you were found in my hometown so I went home to check some things.”

Anya’s gaze snapped to Marfa at the mention of her name, a hurt and betrayed look in them. This was not going to end well for any of them. But when she spoke, she addressed Gleb, “Your hometown? What?”

“I was in the Marines at the time, so I didn’t hear local gossip,” Gleb explained. “But I have an old friend that remembered when you showed up.”

“I told you guys I don’t want to know who I am,” Anya said. “Why are you guys looking into all of this?”

“I don’t know about any of this,” Lily waved off the current drama between friends and roommates currently happening and she walked towards Anya. “But I took one look at you yesterday and saw a ghost. You look just like Alix, when she was younger and with Nicholas’ eyes.”

“Lots of people have blue eyes,” Anya returned. But she twirled the end of her damp ponytail nervously.

Lily reached into her purse, pulling out an envelope of photographs. The resemblance is uncanny. “Marie has a strong hold on what photographs are used in the public, but these are some from the past.” She pulled one from the bottom. “This is the last family portrait taken before the girls had gone back to their boarding school after winter break the year of the murder. I think you should come to Philadelphia to meet Marie, at least.” 

They’re all a couple years older than the faded photograph shown in the media. But the youngest daughter is reminiscent of the Anya that he had first met. Her hair is longer, her face fuller, and she’s missing a small jagged scar by her ear but there’s a stubbornness in her eyes that is pure Anya. 

“I am not her,” Anya insisted, hopping off her stool and dropping the photo onto the counter. “I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

But there’s a wild tone to her voice that suggests that she may believe the opposite.

Lily looked over at Gleb, “What is this notebook?”

“My friend thought my father had continued investigating Anya’s past, long after the police had given up,” he explained. “I found a notebook amongst his things that said Anya but it was all…”

“Written in Cyrillic,” Anya finished for him, flatly. “So you got Dmitry to translate.”

“But when I looked at the notebook, it was all about the Romanov family,” Dmitry explained, lamely. “So we assumed his father was using your investigation as a cover for his real one.”

“Where is the notebook?” Lily asked. 

Dmitry continued to talk to Anya, “I didn’t think it had anything to actually do with you so it didn’t seem worth bringing up.”

“But all of you decided it would be a good idea to go exploring the cobwebs of my past without my permission?” Anya asked, “Without seeing what I wanted?”

“This is really my doing,” Gleb started and Anya shook her head. 

“You don’t know me,” Anya said and pointed at Dmitry and Marfa. “These two do.” She looked over at Marfa, “What did you think?”

Marfa bit her lip before speaking. This really was not going to go well, based on the hesitation she was displaying. Marfa rarely hesitated. “I’ve suspected it since we were teenagers.”

Anya stepped back, “Why? How?”

“You speak French, Anya and Russian and you showed up in Baldwinsville before the bodies were found, but the timing was weird,” Marfa babbled, her thoughts slightly disjointed and in a rush to get out. “It seemed crazy and you insisted you didn’t want to know your past so I didn’t suggest it. You know how things make sense in your head but the moment you go to speak them, you realize how crazy it sounds? But…”

“Can I have the notebook?” Lily asked.

Dmitry looked to Anya, who reluctantly nodded. He went to his room where it remained mostly unread. Translating was a tedious process, and the subject had been dark and heavy so it had been difficult to get through. He went to hand it off to Lily but Anya took it from him. She flipped to the last page and then flipped to the page before that. Her face paled and she dropped the book on the floor. 

“I can’t be her,” she repeated, heading to the door. She addressed him and Marfa before she left. “And I can’t believe you two would go behind my back like this.” 

Marfa went to go after her, but Dmitry placed a bang on her shoulder. It would only get worse if they didn’t give Anya her space to be upset at them. Marfa sighed and got out her phone, pulling up Paulina and Dunya’s contacts to shoot them off a vague text about Anya being upset. 

Dmitry leaned down and picked up the notebook. 

“I understand this is upsetting,” Lily said. “It’s been upsetting.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a card, handing it to Dmitry. “But if she changes her mind, she should really meet with Marie.”

Dmitry set the card down on the counter. “How certain are you that she’s Anastasia?”

He asks the question but the certainty of it already weighs on his heart. Everything weird and confusing about Anya and what they had known about her clicks into place. 

“I grew up with her parents and I saw her being raised,” Lily said, tilting her chin up. “I would know that girl anywhere.” 

Dmitry just nodded in response. Vlad mouthed an apology as he led Lily out. 

“I have to go,” Marfa announced as soon as they were gone, and she ran out the door. She knew better than to go after Anya herself, but when any of them truly fought it was enough to upset her world. 

Later, when Dmitry tries to call Anya, he gets sent straight to voicemail.


	18. Chapter 18

Anya can see a house. A familiar house. Spacious and isolated. Beautiful wood floors her bare feet would tap against. She wanted to wear tap shoes but a stern looking woman with her same heart shaped face warned her against it. “You’re so noisy, Nastyona, go sit down for once,” she would say. There were three girls all with variations of the same face. There was a young boy. He was her doll. 

“Schwipsig,” said a man who was larger than life. She’d tip her head back and she’d look up for miles before she’d see his face. He would look down at her with affection. “Stop tormenting your sisters, and be good for your mother.”

It was so close to her birthday. She felt happiness because she was back from school and had the entire summer ahead of her. The sister with the pinched lips was imitating her mother but couldn’t contain it around her. They were in the home in the country for just a while longer before heading back to the city to meet up with her grandmother. 

Her grandmother was an orange tree. 

Now there was something pressing against her back, and her feet were still bare. She stepped in liquid. It was pitch black. Her doll cried but she couldn’t reach his hand to grab it. There was a thud but she couldn’t tell what had fallen. Her hair was missing. Where had it gone?

There was a loud popping sound and her head was throbbing and more liquid fell down her face. Everything sounded so muffled. She didn’t recognize anything. There was no more crying, just her own heart and heavy breathing. 

She was outside. Her feet were bleeding from the fallen branches and rocks. She was bleeding. Where was it coming from? She fell and crawled and fell and crawled and couldn’t get anywhere. 

She fell asleep. 

Anya woke up, her mouth frozen in a scream. Cold sweat tricked beneath her clothes. Her face was wet, like in the dream, but when she wiped at them they were just translucent tears. 

Light came from her door frame, Paulina and Dunya stood there, looking frozen and frightened themselves. Her nightmares had been bad but abstract- a feeling of impending doom but she never knew of what, this felt violent and primitive. 

They waited for her. 

“I want,” her voice sounded hoarse like she had been screaming for longer than she had been awake. She wanted her father. She wanted her mother. She wanted… she didn’t understand her wants or who these people were. She didn’t know what she needed or wanted. “I want Dmitry.”

Dunya nodded and disappeared from the room and Anya could hear the front door open and shut. 

Paulina stood guard at the door. “Are you still mad at Dmitry?”

Anya was mad at everything at the moment and mostly mad at the memories trying to claw their way forward to her brain. “Yes, but when am I not mad at Dmitry?”

Maybe that’s why she was so quick to fall into anger at him. It was a familiar, comforting feeling to her. 

Paulina just arched an eyebrow, unconvinced. 

“Are you going to tell me what your fight was about?” The apartment felt empty without Marfa. 

“Not tonight,” Anya said, though she was glad to focus on something to help ease the nightmare away. 

Paulina stepped aside and Dmitry came through. She clicked the door shut behind him, and he stood by the door, waiting for a signal from her. The only light illuminating her room were the lights from the street. 

She raised her arms up, and he stepped forward, gathering her up as he joined her on the bed. Anya pressed her ear against his chest and she could feel his lips on her hair and forehead but she just focused on the beat of his heart to retrain hers to follow the right tempo. 

“I’m not her,” her voice sounded petulant. These words had become her mantra. “I can’t be.”

Dmitry’s hand pressed against her cheek, and he tilted her head up slightly. She wanted a fight. “I’m not going to argue with you, Anya.”

This was his fault. His. Gleb’s. Marfa’s. Lily’s. “You put all these ideas in my head and now…” Anya shook her head pulling away from his hand. Then, “If I’m not her, who am I then?”

She had been found at fifteen, the victim of an attempted murder, about three hundred miles from the scene of the crime, and no memory. Did she have dreams or were they memories? She had thought she could tell the difference. 

“You are a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman,” Dmitry told her, smoothing back her hair. There was a familiar soothing feeling attached to the gesture. “No matter where you came from.”

“We don’t do sentiment,” she said into his chest. To be honest, she wasn’t quite certain what they did. Anya has a habit of jumping head first and asking questions later. 

“Anya…”

The next words felt heavy unspoken in the air. 

She pulled away, “Not tonight, please.”

There was only so much emotional unpacking she could deal with in a singular evening. 

Dmitry gave her a singular nod, and she pressed her ear against his heartbeat again. “What do you want to do?”

She wanted to go back to being Anya No-name and no past but they seemed a bit beyond that now. “We should go to Philly.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” she admitted. “But it’ll only get worse not finding out.”

If her nightmare was any indication, at least. 

“I’ll talk to Vlad when you’re ready,” he told her. 

“Thanks,” she mumbled. Her fingers played with the fraying hem of his shirt. Her eyes fought the urge to fall back asleep. She could already feel the cold air of a damp basement when she thought about closing them. “‘Mitry?”

He hesitated, “Yeah?”

“Stay with me tonight?” She felt young and selfish asking so. But out of control like she couldn’t help but take and take from him. 

This answer was no hesitation. “Of course.”

They laid there in silence for several long moments. Her fingers still fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, his fingers still stroking her hair. Her breathing nearly felt even again. Her mind was still away from her body, as though it had another home to go to. 

“Remember those stories you used to tell when we were younger?” She asked. 

“The ones you’d roll your eyes at and leave in the middle of?”

She moved her chin in a nod. Teen Dmitry had been confident and self assured, his sense of identity so attached to the man who had originally raised him. Every confident note his voice held had boiled her blood. 

“Tell me one of those.”

Dmitry took a breath, and she felt his chest rise and fall below her ear. “My father used to take me out to Lake Ontario and set me on my shoulders and say ‘Dima—‘“

“Dima?” She interrupted, amused. She had only heard him called Mitya. Mostly by her other roommates, occasionally by her but it never seemed to truly fit him. 

“That’s what he called me,” Dmitry’s voice held the far away tone of a memory. Then, “You did too.”

Anya scrunched her nose, another thing she couldn’t recall. “I did?”

“When you first broke your leg and I had to come get you,” he replied. “You very happily greeted me as Dima.” 

“Happily?” She could feel his laughter beneath her. “Sorry, continue your story.”

And so he did, uninterrupted as she fell into less fitful sleep than before. 

-

Anya woke up several more times, each time the dreams less vivid than the last. Each time she’d sit up at the end, with broken, uneven breathing and she’d feeling the pressure of Dmitry’s palm against the small of her back, working in a soothing circular motion. “Do you want to stay awake?” He’d whisper in the dark and she’d shake her head falling back against the beat of his heart. Eventually morning broke, and she had gathered a few hours of sleep. 

For once, when she awoke Dmitry stayed sleeping. Maybe it was the calm nature of her awakening or maybe he was just exhausted from the constant interruptions over the past few hours. She slid out of bed, careful not to disturb him. It’s probably the least she could do for her own mixed signals. 

Anya closed her door softly, and turned to see Marfa standing in the kitchen. The two of them froze before running to each other. She found Marfa’s arms wrapped around her. 

“I’m so sorry, Anyok,” Marfa said, pulling away to look at her face. “It was a coward’s move to not tell you.” 

“I didn’t want to hear,” Anya conceded. “But don’t encourage others to go behind my back anymore.” 

“I did tell him to tell you,” Marfa offered weakly, “And he would’ve, if he thought he had found anything.” 

“He shouldn’t have been looking,” she pointed out. The two of them fell onto the sofa. “Do you really think I am her?” 

“I think you’re Anya,” Marfa told her, patting her on the cheek gently. “I think you may have been Anastasia, but it’s okay to not know.” 

That’s what she always believed. She felt exhausted after the day before, like she was constantly running and falling, just like in her dream and not going anywhere. Maybe to stop the nightmares, to stop the exhaustion, and stop the running. 

“Maybe,” Anya said, “But I think I’m going to meet with Marie in Philadelphia, just to be sure.” 

She didn’t think she’d give Vlad or Lily a heads up though, her feet already poised to run. She liked to keep her options open.

“Do you think you’re her?” 

Anya had no idea who she was for as long as she could remember. Just the ever present anxiety that it would be dangerous for her to know. Did she think she could be her because she was latching on to the first plausible explanation of who she could be. 

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, but it still felt like a lie.

Marfa wrapped her arms around her, and Anya rested her head against her shoulder. She wondered if it was a sort of betrayal to go seeking a biological family when she already had one here. 

“Do you want me to go with you?” 

“I…” Anya glanced over to her closed bedroom door, the plan to bring Dmitry already in place without conscious thought. 

She wondered if that was a betrayal of another kind.

“I see,” Marfa’s gazed followed hers. “You forgave him quickly.” 

“I don’t know if I have,” Anya said, because she didn’t know what to forgive or if she should be angry or just feel tired. (She definitely felt tired). 

Marfa let out a gentle laugh, “It’s okay to fall in love.” 

Anya pulled away, “I’m not in love with Dmitry.” 

The same way she was not Anastasia Romanov. The list of things she couldn’t be just kept growing. 

“Fine,” Marfa said, looking like she wasn’t eager to start another source of friction between them at the moment. “But when you fall in love, it’s okay to prioritize someone else above us.” She thought about it a moment. “With our approval, of course. And never above yourself.” 

“Well, with those impossibly high standards,” Anya said, untangling herself from her friend and standing up. “I suppose that means nothing will change anytime soon.” 

She gave Anya a sad smile in return, because there couldn’t be anything but change coming for all of them. 

“Go back to sleep,” Marfa told Anya. “You look like you need it.” 

Anya flipped her off, before slipping back into her bedroom. Nothing really had to change unless she let it.


	19. Chapter 19

Marie had canceled on Anastasia the last time she was supposed to see her. She couldn’t even remember the reason behind the cancellation. Had she just been tired or sick? Was it just for some meaningless appointment that had gone nowhere or did she get distracted by sycophant? The end result was always the same- her last act as a grandmother was letting her youngest granddaughter down. 

“Anastasie,” Marie had spoken into the phone. “I will see you in Philadelphia soon enough.”

She remembered she could hear the undignified eye roll on Anastasia’s end. “Nonna, Philly isn’t Paris and you did promise you’d take me to the ballet every night and you’ve only taken me, like, twice since I started school here.”

Maria and Anastasia were at boarding school just outside of Paris, and Olga was attending the Sorbonne, having fallen in love with the city during her time at boarding school. Tatiana was on her gap year, and last Marie had spoken to her she was somewhere in Germany. All four girls were meeting up soon to go home for the summer. Then Marie was coming to Philadelphia to visit for a month and they’d join her in that city. They would’ve been reunited soon. 

“Darling, that’s impractical when you have school,” Marie had told her. “You should want to hang out with your friends, not your stodgy old Nonna.”

“No one has a Grandmother like you,” Anastasia had returned in the dreamy tone that was her default. Or maybe Marie’s memory made her seem even younger than she had been. “All my friends Grandmothers move to Florida, not to Paris. They’re jealous of your sophistication.”

She should’ve appreciated Anastasia’s admiration of her. At 14, nearly 15, there hadn’t been much time left for her to want to hang out with her grandmother so much. She was outgoing and friendly, a light in every room she entered. There was and would be no shortage of people who would want to be around her. 

“Sophistication is more than where you live,” Marie had pointed out. “I have to go but I’ll see you soon.”

“Tebya lyublyu,” her granddaughter had sung back in her ear before hanging up. And before Marie could protest the choice of language she had chosen. 

Out of all her grandchildren, Anastasia had been the best at learning other languages and had taken to Russian as though it was her first language. Unnecessary and undignified, it was one of the few things Marie and Alix had agreed upon and complained together about. The more they complained, the more proficient Anastasia would become in the language. 

All five children could speak it, it was tradition after all but none of the others had much use for it. Anastasia treated it like her own secret language and was heavily indulged by her father, who Marie knew would sneak away to brush up on the language his father had taught him long ago just to keep up with his youngest daughter. 

Then all four girls had returned home and had not met up with Marie when they should’ve. She hadn’t panicked at first, Nicholas was taken to flights of fancy and had known to take an impromptu trip instead of being where he should be but then she began to worry when she couldn’t reach them at all. 

Then the absolute massacre had been discovered at their home about an hour outside of Philadelphia. Lily had been by her side when she traveled and had been at her side when the police officer had shown up. The “all of them” had echoed in her head for months afterwards. Then the gruesome details came out one by one. 

They tried to protect her from it but Marie insisted on hearing every piece of information that came out, sitting with her back straight and face stoic until after the officer would leave. 

Then came the news, once the site had been cleaned up and the area had been thoroughly researched, or so they had said, that they couldn’t find Alexei or Anastasia. 

She hadn’t known what to do with that news. It’s mostly likely the killer, the police talked and insisted that it was one singular person that had taken down her entire family, had scattered the bodies around. The two youngest and lightest. 

Perhaps it was her own delusion, her own way of coping but she had never felt Anastasia leave her heart. And now they had found Alexei’s body and so many people around her had given up hope. While others had kicked up the belief that Anastasia was still alive. Lily kept the worst of them at bay but she was still contacted by young women and fringe groups claiming they were Anastasia or knew what had happened to her. 

She had hired an assistant in addition to Lily to deal with these charlatans. They had cut back a lot over the past few years, and maybe she would have some peace to grieve finally or to convince her heart to but the news of Alexei had brought them out in full force. 

She was happy to have Lily back for this. She had gotten married and had been off with that husband of hers. Marie was not a fan of Vlad Popov, but she wouldn’t stand in the way of anyone’s brief happiness in this world. Maybe she would’ve put up more of a fight when she was younger. She certainly had when her son had fallen in love.

“Do you think you’ll head back soon?” Lily asked her one night, while they were walking to the theater. 

She so infrequently came back these days but she kept her subscription tickets to the theater, just for when she was in town. She had her assistant give away tickets when she wouldn’t be able to attend, but she never kept much track of those things. 

“Are you looking to leave?” Marie asked. It was a fair question, Lily had a life of her own. A husband. A future. 

All Marie had now was her past. 

“No,” Lily was quick to say. She had been strangely on edge since she had come back from visiting New York with Vlad. Like she was constantly on the verge of a confession. Which was strange given now plain spoken she had known Lily to be. “I just didn’t know what you had planned.”

Marie no longer had plans. Her heart brought her place to place and kept insisting on beating. 

“Tonight this showing of The King and I,” Marie gestured over time the vague direction of the theater ahead. “Tomorrow, I have to meet my lawyer to discuss estates and wills.”

They thought it was time to put up Nicholas’ residence for sale. Only the truly terrible and bizarre wanted to buy a house that was also a site of a brutal crime. 

Finding Alexei had forced them to be quiet on that front. The ground felt sacred now, as though any moment it could lead them to Anastasia’s fate. 

“I’ll accompany you,” Lily said, loyally. 

“What does your husband do when you’re spending time with a sad, old woman?”

“Oh, it’s better for me to not know,” she returned, waving off the question. “The mystery is what keeps our love alive.”

Marie had no response to that, having to witness many of the bizarre traits and rituals of their relationship. 

They continued to walk, the street relatively quiet, and peaceful. Maybe she’d stay in town for awhile. Or maybe she’d wake up and hop on a plane and go back to hide in Paris. Her emotions ran all over the place, and she hated the lack of control she had over them. 

“You walk too fast!” The complaint from a younger woman broke through the quiet of the night. 

Marie looked over to see a tall, handsome young man stop in his tracks, and reach out and pull a young woman to him. She was wearing heels, but even in the heels she barely came up to his chin. Impressively, she could feel the strength of the glower that the girl threw at that chin from where she stood. 

Marie went to continue on, but the girl spat a curse at him in Russian (then several curses) that stopped her in her tracks. It had been so long since she had heard the language spoken. Maybe not even since that phone call with Anastasia where she had said I love you in it before hanging up. 

The boy laughed, and wrapped his arms around the girl, following her footsteps as she attempted to storm away. He released her as they fell under the street like and the girl came into view. 

Marie gasped, causing Lily’s attention to snap over to where she looked. The girl had the dark golden blonde hair that had sat atop her granddaughters head (the only piece of her they had found was a pile of Anastasia’s hair in the basement), and Alix’s profile. 

Her eyesight was not so good anymore, and she should wonder if she could see the girl clearly or if memory was superimposed over this image she was seeing in real time. Marie liked to think she could recognize Anastasia anywhere at any time were she ever to run into her. But now she found her heart skip a beat, and everything she knew and remembered about her granddaughter called into question. 

She didn’t know if she had made some sort of noise or something, because the girl looked over at them. She looked over at them with Nicholas’ eyes, which then widened. They stood suspended in that moment before the girl ran off. The boy hesitated half a moment, squinting at them from below the street light, before chasing after her. 

Her hand found Lily’s arm, and Marie grasped it. Nearly surprised to feel something so solid in this world she where she found herself surrounded by ghosts. 

“Lily,” she forced her voice to say. “Who was that?”

Lily took a deep breath and led her over to a bench, “I have something to tell you.”


	20. Chapter 20

It was a stupid fantasy to think that Anya still had family out there. She had always thought so. Back at the group home, surrounded by the other girls who had family out there still but no family worth their time, it seemed better to be an orphan. There were some who had good parents in bad situations, and a couple success stories even. But that seemed like too much to reach for most days. 

She knew Marfa’s stories, in and out of the foster system and the abuse by her mother’s boyfriends until finally drugs conquered her mother and she was sent away for good. Paulina has been orphaned at the age of four, and rather quickly adopted. The family treated her like a doll to dress up and play with before growing bored when she hit her pre-teens and abandoned, she was. 

Dunya has a father out there still, and Anya could tell whenever he reached out. Dunya’s parents had her when they were still in high school and couldn’t handle the pressures of parenthood. Her mom ditched when she was two, and her father’s parents pressured him into giving her up in adoption. His life was fairly downhill from there, and occasionally he’d reach out needing something from Dunya. She never talked about it when it happened, but claimed she never helped him out when he asked. (I have nothing to give, she’d tell them before falling into a depressive funk for 3-7 days.)

Then there was Dmitry, whose parents had both died by the time he hit the age of twelve. His father had been arrested before that, the prison system ultimately killing him. Dmitry was the person with the strongest parental presence that she could recall. His father's ghost would follow where he walked, minding everything he did. 

By the time they moved to Brooklyn and Dmitry had been there for two years, he had become his own person. That seemed to have annoyed Anya more than anything. 

Everyone had to come from somewhere. 

She had not come from a rich and powerful family. She remembered all those years ago, Paulina joking that Anya could be a Princess and this seemed as unlikely as that. (So why did her soul recognize the truth of everything?)

Dmitry caught up with her easily enough after she ran away. Unsurprising, given one step of his equaled about three of hers. And then he just sat there, with his arm around her, and lips pressed to her temple whispering words. She didn’t understand how or why he could still be so patient with her after all these years of strife from her. She didn’t even have any patience for herself. 

“I’m not her,” she had said for the final time, “But I should see this though.”

Dmitry had nodded, and helped her stand up. She didn’t know what to do around him anymore because instinct dictated she kiss him but they hadn’t done anything of that nature since Lily had confronted her with her theory. They seemed stuck in limbo. 

Instead, she had squeezed his hand and declared that she should do it alone. Dmitry had gotten her Marie’s address from Vlad and escorted her to the front door of the building. 

They let her into the building and directed her up to Marie’s apartments like she was expected. It made her feel uneasy, as though this poor woman had been waiting years for her granddaughter to come home and Anya was somehow taking advantage of it in her own confusion. 

Lily let her in, pressing cold hands against her cheeks in greeting and staring at her as though she was recognizable. Anya didn’t know what these people saw in her that she could not see it herself. 

Then her and Vlad left. 

“You must think of me some silly, sad woman,” Marie said, causing Anya to start. She hadn’t seen where she was in the living room. 

“No, ma’am,” Anya told her, honestly. “We both have unusual circumstances.” 

“The world knows mine,” Marie said, and she stared at Anya as though her face was a puzzle. “What is yours?”

“I don’t really know,” Anya said. She had built up an indifference to this fact for years now, and felt it crack and break beneath the scrutiny. “I can’t remember anything from before I was about fifteen.” 

“And what happened to you when you were fifteen?”

She didn’t know how to say this without being flippant, casual and dismissive. To say it otherwise was to peak people’s interest and pity. 

“I remember waking up in a hospital,” she began and she sat. Then it felt weird to sit while Marie stood above her, so she jumped back up. “The doctors and police asked me so many questions and I just didn’t know the answer. Simple questions like name, date of birth, where I was from…” Anya shook her head, pulling herself out of the memory of the teenaged girl she had been. So frightened and lost and vulnerable. “They explained that I had infections from wounds and needed stitches in several places.”

“Wounds?”

Anya pulled her shirt up, pointing at the jagged white scar on the front of her, and then turned to show the damage on her back. The puckered skin and angry marks. It was her least favorite area of her body, and she avoided anyone being able to see that part of her. Even Dmitry hadn’t seen them, though his fingers had felt along them. 

Marie gasped, and Anya turned back to see her put her hand to her mouth. “Dear child, what did they do to you?”

Anya’s hand fluttered to the scar along her scalp, though she doesn’t move to show it to Marie. “I don’t know. The police thought I was a victim of domestic abuse.”

“And no one ever reported you missing?”

“None that I’m aware of,” and given the state she had been found in, Anya had considered it a blessing. “When I first woke up I only spoke in French, once I calmed down I could speak in English.”

“Anastasia went to boarding school in France,” Marie commented. “She spoke it quite eloquently. Her favorite language to torture me in was Russian, however.” She looked over at Anya, “I assume you can say more than curse words in the language.”

Anya’s brow wrinkled in confusion before she remembered she had been cursing out Dmitry right before her and Marie had seen each other. Her skin flushed slightly that this would be Marie’s first impression of her. “Woke up fluent in that as well. They figured I must be Russian-American in some way, as it would be unusual to know the language otherwise.”

“Truly,” Marie agreed. “Tell me now, do you think you’re Anastasia?”

“No,” Anya began before confessing, “But I don’t want to be.” 

“We have little control over where we came from,” Marie said. 

This was true, and no matter where Anya came from it was not a happy story. 

“Do you think I’m Anastasia?” Anya asked. 

“Yes,” Marie said, “But I don’t know if it’s just because it’s what I want to believe.”

Anya didn’t know if it’s because she wanted Anya to be her granddaughter or if she just wanted her granddaughter to be alive. There were tests to prove if she was or not but this part seemed like the more important part to conquer before the next step. 

Then Marie stepped forward, pulling Anya to her. Anya’s nose against the crook of her neck bringing forth a feeling of unfamiliar nostalgia. She breathed in and… 

“Orange blossoms.”

“What was that, dear?” Marie asked, pulling away slightly. 

“You smell of orange blossoms,” Anya repeated. Her memory was just a hazy collection of emotions rather than anything tangible or coherent. Then something began to form in her mind- a dream or a memory? “I broke a bottle on the living room rug when I was young and it smelled like you. My parents wanted to throw it away, but I wouldn’t let them because I missed you so much. They moved it to my bedroom.”

She had been such a demanding child. Charmingly stubborn, her father had called her and her mother would chastise him for enabling her. 

Marie placed her hands against Anya’s cheeks and asked, “Anastasia?”

Anya started crying because she remembered. Not everything, not all at once but little pieces revealed themselves slowly. Cobwebs pulling off her memories for things she had unknowingly known all along. 

She found herself once again enveloped in the familiar embrace of her grandmother. 

-

Dmitry had turned down Vlad and Lily’s offer to go out to dinner. His stomach was in knots, even though it wasn’t his past or family he was discovering. Anya had been so shaken up that night Dunya had come and gotten him from his room, saying Anya was asking for him. It had reminded him of when he had shown up at the hospital when she broke her leg, and had rattled off all the people she would have listed before him as her emergency contact. It was a weird space to be in for him to be the first she would ask for after a nightmare. But then he had stepped in her room and she had opened her arms and everything fell together. 

Then, earlier, when she had seen Lily and Marie on the street and ran, she hadn’t been able to stop shaking. Even as she straightened her spine, and insisted that she was ready to go and see Marie. Alone. 

It was hard to think of any other outcome now than that she was, in truth, Anastasia Romanov. Everything about that clicked as well. 

It didn’t change anything, and changed everything all at once. 

“Hey,” a voice came from behind him, and he turned on the bench to see Anya standing there. She looked the same, eyes a bit more red and puffy, but the same person she had been the week before, a year before, six years before. “You’re still here.”

“Where else would I be?” 

She shrugged, “So are you going to ask if I’m her?”

“I don’t think I need to,” Dmitry said, standing up. She nodded, confirming. “Are you staying here?”

“Tonight,” she said. “Not forever. My home is in New York now.”

They were in a strange place now. Begrudging acquaintances to begrudging friends to all that plus benefits to whatever it was they were now. 

“How do you feel?”

“Wrung out,” she answered, stepping forward. “It’s kind of a lot to remember fifteen years of your life in one night.” 

“Do you remember everything?”

Anya shook her head, “Not everything. Not a lot about...that night or the time after it.”

“Do you want us to call you Anastasia now?” 

“No,” she let out a little laugh. “That doesn’t feel like me anymore, and I’ve gone by Anya for so long, it just fits now.”

It did. Even standing here in this unfamiliar city, she was an Anya. 

“Also,” she continued on. “No one is going to know. We decided that tonight. I don’t want the attention.”

“You? Not wanting attention?” He attempted to tease but the night felt too heavy for such things. 

“As surprising as that may be…” she let her voice trail off into an awkward silence. 

It had never been awkward between them before. 

“Do you…” Dmitry paused and started over, unsure of the tone he wanted for this. “Do you want me to go back to New York?”

Anya shook her head, “No.” She extended her arms out and he walked into them, lifting her up off the ground as she grasped onto his shoulders. “My grandmother wanted to meet my young man.” 

Dmitry kept her off the ground as he looked around them, “Do I get to meet him as well?”

“Dima,” she attempts to scold, but her face morphed into a smile before she leaned forward and their lips met. 

They parted, their foreheads still touching. 

He kissed her again, “So, does this mean you like me, or something?”

“No,” she was quick to say, as he set her back on the ground. “Not in the slightest. I might love you, though.”

Dmitry wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her to his side, “Gross.”

Her arms wrapped around him in a hug, “Don’t ruin it.”

“Okay,” he said and stopped them in the middle of the street. And turned so he was standing in front of her. Dmitry cupped her face in his hands and said, “I love you too.”

She stared at him unblinking for a moment, before pulling away from him. “No, you’re right, that’s really gross.”

Dmitry laughed as she grabbed his hand. 

“Are you sure you want me to meet your grandmother?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking back at him, “She’s already seen you, so it’s too late to hire someone else.”

Naturally. Dmitry pulled on her hand gently, stopping her in her tracks. “Are you okay?”

“That’s a question for the therapy I should probably be in,” Anya replied. “But tonight, I have my Nonna and my young man, so let’s take it one thing at a time.” 

Dmitry let her continue to lead him back to her grandmother's apartment and back to her past.


	21. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shout out to iz, leah and cat for being so supportive and having to deal with me as i wrote this. i love you all!!!

Some nights, Anya had to claw her way out of her nightmares. It seemed unfair with the therapy and prescriptions, the nightmares would continue. Sometimes the drugs made them weirder. Like going through a fun house with the warped mirrors at a fair. It was like her regular nightmares but distorted and twisted and a little ridiculous. They weren’t frequent, nor were they infrequent. There was no rhyme or reason to them and she knew they’d be her companion for life. A tiny part of her soul stuck in the basement of her parents house with a gun pointed at her. 

When she awoke, however, Dmitry was always there, his arms already around her, guiding her back to the ground. Once or twice she’d notice scratches on his arm or shoulder, and she knew it had to be from her own thrashing about. So she would just press her lips against them and murmur an apology as he pulled her closer to her. 

One night, after a pretty horrific awakening, she found herself sleepy again, her fingers toying with the hem of his shirt, as he spoke. He was getting really good at making up stories, having run out of ones to tell her about his life. She enjoyed the sound of his voice and the way his chest vibrates against her ear as he did so. 

It occurred to her that the nightmares weren’t the only constant companion she could have. And that he should probably start writing some of these down to get published. 

“Dima,” she said, with no regards to whether or not she was interrupting him. She went to tell him about writing it down, but what came out instead was, “Want to get married?”

“Right now?”

“No,” she mumbled. “You can’t get married in New York at one am, I’m certain.”

There was a lot you can do in New York City, unfortunately same day marriages especially in the middle of the night were not one of them. 

“I don’t know if I want to marry you if it can’t be at one am,” Dmitry told her, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. “But we can find out.” 

She fell back asleep after that. The next morning she stumbled out to his kitchen, to find him making French toast and she thinks she might be okay with marrying him at some time other than one am. 

He looked over his shoulder at her, “Change your mind?”

She slapped her hand against his ass, “No, I’m locking this down.”

“Charming,” he responded. “Are you going to tell people?”

Anya made a face, “Why do people have to know if I like you or not?” 

Honestly, it was none of their business. 

“I think that gig is up,” Dmitry responded, handing her a plate of French toast. 

“I don’t want a wedding,” she announced as she sat down at the counter. “Just a marriage.” 

Dmitry kissed the top of her nose, “You can have anything you’d like.”

“You’re entering an everlasting contract with me,” Anya warned, pointing a forkful of french toast at him. “I wouldn’t go around making those kinds of promises.” 

This time he kissed her mouth, them both sticky and sweet with maple syrup. 

They get married a little less than a week later. It happens at the city clerk’s office, and the only person in attendance as their witness is her grandmother. There was some discussion about if their roommates could attend, but once the number of attendees started to reach close to half a dozen, it felt like too many people, so she chose her Nonna. 

If nothing else, it seemed cruel to deprive her grandmother of the chance to see her only living granddaughter get married, even if it was not a traditional wedding. As a gift, she gives Anya her alexandrite engagement ring, saying she doesn’t need to wear it but can keep it as a keepsake. It was hers, either way. Anya decided to keep it on, because she liked the slight weight of it. If she could no longer be a Romanov in name or in public (even if it were by choice), it was nice to have a private tie to the family she lost.

One that isn’t tied to the nightmares she still has. 

Her grandmother cries throughout the ceremony, helping pull Anya and Dmitry away from their own emotions. Afterwards, Anya thinks it’s nice to finally be able to have a last name that actually means something to her again. 

They find an apartment to move into together, but have to wait until the beginning of the next month. The night before she officially moves out of her apartment with her friends, the four of them gathered in the living room, in true slumber party fashion. A movie plays in the background, but zero attention has been paid to it all night. It reminds her of the nights spent in group homes, the four of them packed into a (much smaller) room. 

Paulina, who was in the process of twisting Anya’s hair into a complicated braid, pulls on her hair when she starts crying. So many changes over the past year, but this feels like the biggest one yet. (Well second biggest one, finding out she was the only surviving person of a massacre and finding her grandmother probably was bigger.) 

“I don’t want to move out,” she proclaimed once she got ahold of herself. 

Dunya takes a bite off her Twizzler, as she reached over to pat Anya on the knee. “I’m sorry, have you been living here?”

Well mostly in name and storage only, as most nights she spent tucked into Dmitry’s bed but, “It’s symbolic!”

“It’s two blocks,” Marfa pointed out. “And you’ve been married for two weeks.”

“Two blocks is like a hundred miles in New York City distance,” Anya pouted. She was (mostly) being dramatic. 

“How do you think we feel?” Paulina asked, removing the bobby pin from her mouth to pin into Anya’s hair. “We are losing easy access to Dmitry’s cooking.”

Anya rolled her eyes, but she was able to do as her proximity to Dmitry’s cooking was not changing. Technically, she was getting closer in her official residence. 

“I’ll miss you guys, too.”

“What’s to miss?” Paulina said, wrapping her arms around Anya in a hug. “You’ll still see us all the time.”

“I’m moving out soon, too,” Marfa pointed out. She had gotten a job after graduation in Queens and was leaving behind the neighborhood. 

Anya glared at her from Paulina’s embrace, “Ugh I’ll have to take the subway to you.”

“It’s called love,” Marfa returned. 

She supposed it must be. 

Living with Dmitry is surprisingly different than crashing in his bed nearly every night at the apartment he shared with Gleb. It’s not so much they become different, but the experience and circumstances are new. Dmitry likes it, he says, because now he can find all his clothes in one place instead of strewn across two apartments. Anya likes it because she’s never had a space of her own. She went from being one of five children, to being in a group home, to having three roommates. And while being alone would never quite suit her, being one of two was very nice indeed. 

An elderly woman occupies the apartment across the hall from them. She is childless, and only speaks Russian. Dmitry and Anya’s fluency in the language charmed and delighted her, so they end up with a defacto grandmother who shows up at least once a week with some sort of Russian dessert to feed them. 

One Dmitry even eats, because he’s not rude enough to explain a healthy diet to an old Russian woman trying to feed him.

It’s not a cure all for what ails her. But it’s nice to feel more like herself, both the lost heiress and the displaced orphan, than she ever had before. And it’s a good start to the rest of her life.


End file.
